Between a Rock and the Hot Place
by Colleen
Summary: Six months later Johnny Blaze heads back to Fort Worth as the FBI comes in to help with the sulphur death cases. Enter Special Agent Stanley Goodspeed, Chemical Weapon’s Expert and a dead ringer for a certain hot headed motorcyclist. GhostRiderThe Rock.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Ghost Rider belongs to Marvel Comics and Sony Pictures and possibly others. The Rock (1996) belongs to Don Simpson, Jerry Bruckheimer and probably a whole lot of other people/companies. Daredevil belongs to Marvel Comics and probably a lot of other people as well. I don't own them and I won't make any money from this. I'm just seeing what they can do when I mush them all together. Please, no suing.

Author's note: This is primarily a crossover between the Ghost Rider movie, comic and novelization with a character and some background from the 1996 movie The Rock. Daredevil appears only briefly and as more of a background event then as a character, so if Daredevil's who you're interested in there won't be enough of him in here to matter.

I will be borrowing heavily from the Ghost Rider Comics for villains and situations as well as the two movies.

Warning: I use British/Canadian spelling so some words (like sulphur/sulfer) may seem odd but they are spelled correctly.

Written for NaNoWriMo 2007.

Rating: T for violence and maybe some swearing.

Summary: Six months have passed and Johnny Blaze heads back to Fort Worth just as the FBI come in to help with the sulphur death cases. Enter Special Agent Stanley Goodspeed, Chemical Weapon's Expert and a dead ringer for a certain hot headed motorcyclist. Crossover Ghost Rider/The Rock.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Started November 1st, 2007

Chapter One

_Everyone fears and courts his own demon._

_-- __**Mason Cooley**_

Lonny Hopper ran, breaths harshly panting a stitch in his side and no intention of stopping.

It just wasn't fair. That old gas station was practically out in the middle of nowhere. At worst he should have been looking at a poor haul from robbing the place, not...

The sound of a motorcycle engine gunned behind him and he zigzagged around a couple of rocks before tripping over a third one and ended up sliding through the cactus infested sand into a dry creek bed. By some miracle he landed on his feet and ignoring his now prickling backside he staggered along the hard cracked ground.

Damn it, it was supposed to be a simple job. Just go in, wave a gun around and make off with enough cash for his next fix. Instead the dumb assed idiot behind the cash register had to start waving around his own gun and then... well really it was just self defence, it wasn't his fault.

The motorbike roared again, the rider obviously running parallel to Lonny's run along the old creek bed.

Even then it would have been fine, but no, no that damn motorcyclist just had to come in right then and there and try to pay for his gas. Lonny knew that it had been a bad idea to rob the place while someone was outside gassing up but it was just supposed to take a couple of minutes and the weekend warrior outside should have been busy for at least that long, if not longer.

It was such a simple plan; he didn't know how it had all gone to hell.

Literally.

"**Enough!" **A harsh voice growled out, the sound of it in even that one word bringing to mind some powerful predator mixed with the crackle of fire and the sound of claws through flesh.

And a length of burning chain wrapped around Lonny's neck, choking him even as he attempted to pull the impossible length of joined metal away from his throat. Gasping exclamations of pain followed as the flames, instead of burning, were cold enough to cause instant frost bite.

With a quick yank the killer was pulled up the bank of the dry creek and into the painful grip of something even colder.

It was such a simple plan, even after he'd shot the clerk, the old man who ran the even older gas station. It should have still been a simple plan even when the guy in metal studded black leather that'd been filling up walked in before he should have. Instead as Lonny levelled his gun at the unfortunate witness the biker gave an angry growl before he started to laugh...

Lonny thought that the guy must have been flaked out on something himself. After all he had a gun in his face, with a body on the floor and he was laughing. Then it must have finally dawned on him that he was next because he began to shake. A malicious little smile had started to form on Lonny's face when the guy just, and this was the one thing he still couldn't quite believe. The guy just burst into flames.

And he was still laughing.

Lonny stared into the empty eye sockets of the burning...skeleton that held him in his grasp and felt like laughing himself. There was no way that this was real, no way that that guy had burned away all his flesh and could still stand. No way that some everyday slob on a bike could suddenly turn into a demon from hell. There was no such thing. The only demon's were the ones in his head and if he could just get to his next fix then even those ones couldn't get to him.

Unless of course none of this was real, yeah that made sense. It was just a bad trip.

The apparition growled again and pulled him closer and Lonny realized that what ever bad trip he was on it was about to get much, much worse.

Damn, he wished he still had the gun. Not that he was sure what good it would do, seeing as he'd already emptied the thing into the being in front of him and it hadn't even grunted at the impact of hot lead hitting its body.

Maybe throwing the old pistol at him hadn't been the smartest thing he'd ever done but just what good was an empty gun anyway?

As the monster in front of him pulled him in closer Lonny felt his bladder give way. The smell of piss managing for a moment to cut into the stench of brimstone that poured off of the being in front of him. One of the springs in his so called mind finally snapped from the current over load and he started to babble. "Just a bad trip, just a bad trip, just a bad trip, just a ba...

The burning...thing gave him a shake, shutting him up as well as making sure that he'd captured his full attention and then it passed judgement.

"**Guilty."**

"No, man no, it's just a bad trip," Lonny said, before the ghastly rider pulled him just a little bit closer and he learned what a bad trip really was. The things eye sockets seemed to pull at him, dragging him into their darkness. And then he was falling. He landed, hard and looked up to see the first person he'd beaten badly enough to send to the hospital and he hit him and hit him, and he felt each and every blow. Then he fell again and was holding down, and being held down as he got lucky, was raped, violated, and sickness welled up in his stomach and he fell again and again and again, each time visiting something horrible he had done, and each time it was worse.

And each time the pain became worse until he felt crippled in both body and mind and screamed until he was sure he couldn't scream anymore.

And even through the pain and the sounds of his cries he heard that horrible growling voice.

"**Your soul is stained by the blood of the innocent. Feel their pain..."**

And then he was endlessly falling, events happening faster and faster as he was endlessly being beaten, raped, stabbed, shot, bludgeoned. Anything and everything he had ever done was being done to him but it had to end eventually, didn't it?

"**...A hundred fold."**

And Lonny screamed. And he knew now he would never stop screaming.

Johnny Blaze dropped the quivering, keening pile of refuse know as Lonny Hopper into a pile on the floor of the gas stations small grocery store and went to check on the owner even though he was sure the man was dead. The bullet hole dead centre in his chest made it unlikely that he had survived the shot. Johnny knelt down beside him anyway and made a quick check at the man's throat while placing a hand on his stomach below the wound to verify that the poor soul had neither breath nor pulse. With a shake of his head he pulled back from the body and sighed at the loss. Not for the first time he was disturbed that all those First Aid courses he had taken over the years were now mostly being used to verify that someone was dead and beyond help rather that being used to patch someone up while they waited for more experienced help to save them.

With another little shake of his head Johnny stood up and looked around for the video camera that most of these stores had to deter robberies. He gave a little humph when he realized that the shop didn't appear to have one, probably the reason the pile of trash lying on the floor and still attempting to scream through a throat that must by now have been shredded to ribbons had decided to rob it.

Well, it was one less thing to worry about. He'd never felt good when he'd had to take one of those tapes, but he knew he'd feel even worse if he'd ended up at a police station being questioned about what someone might see on one of those tapes when his alter ego stepped in to punish the guilty.

Johnny turned towards the door to leave; he took one step towards it then suddenly gave his forehead a whack with the palm of his right hand. As he turned back towards the checkout counter he fished his wallet out of his back pocket and making sure to only touch the edges of the bills, something he always did, he quickly counted out the money to pay for the gas he'd just filled his bike with.

True, there wasn't anyone here to take the money and it was likely that the only one who would have cared about the money was now lying dead on the floor but it was possible that there were other owners or that the man had family or heirs and what little there was would belong to them, even the gas in Johnny's tank if he didn't pay for it.

He left the full amount, plus a small tip as he wasn't going to go around the counter and attempt to make change. Then he weighed the money down with a jar of liquorice that sat on the counter in an attempt to tempt the impulse buyer, making sure to not get his fingerprints on it. Just like the video tapes the last thing he needed was to leave any physical evidence that might end with him in lock up.

Because that had just gone so well last time.

Keeping that in mind he pulled out an old cloth he kept in his coat pocket and wiped down the inside and outside door handles on his way out. Using the same cloth he pulled the receiver off of the payphone attached to the outside of the building and punched in the numbers 911. He waited until one of the 911 operators came on the line and then let go of the handset, letting it bang against the building. He could still hear her voice, tinny over the distance as he gave the gas pump nozzle and controls a quick once over with his cloth before getting on his bike.

He definitely needed to cut back on all the CSI reruns he kept watching. They were making him even more paranoid then usual.

Grace purred to life as he kick started the engine and he pointed her front tire towards their next destination.

"Time to head home." He told her, not sure he was ready himself to head back to Fort Worth and the loft he still kept there but certain that after six months on the road that his sanity demanded that he at least make a pit stop at his old home and attempt to weave a few of the strands of his old life back into his current one. He wouldn't be staying more than a few weeks at the most. Because despite what he'd just said to Grace he knew he could never really go home. Strange how different being on the road felt when you knew that.

"Ah, enough introspection," and Johnny opened up the throttle and making sure to not leave any tread marks he pulled away from the station and hit the open road, heading for home.


	2. Chapter 2

Still don't own. Please see Chapter One for full disclaimer and other useful information.

Author's note: I pretty much know zip about FBI procedures and the like. Most of my 'knowledge' comes from TV, Movies and some poking around on the net. Apologies if any of it comes off as completely wrong.

I am also probably taking liberties with the effects of sulphur.

And now... Stanley.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter Two

_I don't even know enough to know I don't know enough._

_--__** TV Commercial (unknown)**_

FBI Chemical Weapons Specialist Dr. Stanley Goodspeed skilfully manoeuvred through the hallways of the J. Edgar Hoover building dodging around other agents and staff even as he was distracted by the file in his hands. The sooner he could get to the lab and the rats nest of shared office space the sooner he could go over the thing in detail and given that the assistant director had just dumped it on him with the demand for his opinion at a briefing in the next two hours every moment counted.

And as he was expecting to start his vacation tomorrow he wanted to make sure that his opinion was detailed enough that they wouldn't need him after today.

Almost back to safety Stanley opened the door to the geek squads office and promptly ran smack into his working partner and watched in horror as the file flew into the air and made sure to scatter its pages over as wide an area of ground as the limited space would allow. With a groan Stanley started to pick up the pages, barely acknowledging his partners "sorry dude" as he also started to pick up the files contents.

Thank God the pages were numbered.

A horrified exclamation of disbelief from his partner Dr. Hunter, who had the unfortunate first name of Waldo, had Stanley looking up at him with a question on his face.

"What?"

Wordlessly Waldo turned the picture he was looking at so Stanley could see it. It was of an older man in the clothing of a train stationmaster. He appeared to have been mummified and then dyed a shade of blue as yet unknown to nature. A ballpoint pen sticking out of the pocket of his coveralls dispelled the possibility that the body could have been old enough for the level of mummification that it showed.

Stanley took the picture from Waldo with a frown. Then he shook his head at it in denial.

"Let's get this file back together so we can find out what the heck did that." Stanley grabbed some more of the papers off the floor and shoved them haphazardly into their folder. Waldo just scooped his share up into an unwieldy pile and headed over to a clear space at the nearest table to sort them out.

"We both have to be at a briefing about this in less than two hours."

Waldo looked at Stanley like he had to be mad, but Stanley just shrugged and started to put the papers back in order, reading them as he went along.

--------000--------

Two hours later saw Stanley and Waldo in a conference room with several more agents. Stanley realized with a sinking heart that the group had all the markings of a task force. If it was then very shortly he would probably be finding himself on his way to Fort Worth, Texas, just at the start of what was supposed to be his family vacation time.

His wife would not be pleased.

And an unpleased Carla was almost as scary as whatever was happening down Texas way.

Assistant Director Green, a tall, slightly balding man in his late fifties stood up in front of the briefing table, immediately gaining the attention of everyone in the room. "I hope you've all had a chance to look over the files." Everyone nodded. "Good, Special Agent in Charge Thornton will just be going over the highlights to make sure we're all on the same page." He gestured to the dark haired thirty-ish looking agent beside him whose very appearance seemed to scream FBI Agent.

Agent Thornton stood up and started to pace the room as he spoke.

"In February of this year a series of unexplained deaths took place in Fort Worth, Texas. The deaths occurred in a biker bar called the Broken Spoke Saloon, at an old train station just north of the downtown area, and in a loft in downtown Fort Worth itself."

"The cause of death in each case appears to be massive sulphur poisoning and while we're not sure about the timing of the deaths at the saloon the stationmaster had been seen alive just two hours before his body was found. The body found in the loft, one Randall Mackenzie had been seen alive within four hours of his body being discovered, so whatever did this, it was fairly quick."

"No puncture wounds were found on the bodies but autopsies show a point on each of them that the poisoning seemed to spread out from. While some of the bodies have the nexus point in the same place not all of them do."

"The only suspect questioned in the case was one Johnny Blaze. Some of you may recognize the name as he is some kind of motorcycle sportsman."

A couple of the agents snorted at Thornton's description of one of the best know motorcycle daredevils around but said nothing when the agent gave each of them a little glare.

"Tire treads from one of his motorcycles was found in a path of destruction that was traced all the way from the downtown core to the train depot where the stationmasters body was found. On top of that he was acquainted with the last victim and the loft the body was found in belonged to Blaze. Police were actually holding him over the tread mark when some kind of fire and explosion occurred in the holding cells. It rendered several people unconscious, melted part of the cell and caused so much damage to the camera system that everything was wiped out. It also allowed Mr. Blaze to apparently wander off in a daze." This time it was Thornton's turn to snort over something he'd just said.

"Police were too busy to do much about it as they were involved in a high profile, high speed chase shortly after the explosion. Whatever they were after has since been written up as some kind of publicity stunt gone wrong. They suspect that Blaze was involved with it but are unable to prove it."

"Given the inability of the Fort Worth Police to find the person or persons behind these poison attacks and given the possibility that these were chemical attacks by terrorists the FBI and Homeland Security have been asked to step in and take over the case."

Assistant Director Green nodded at the last statement. "Thank you Agent Thornton." The agent gave a quick nod of his head and retook his seat. The director looked down at his notes and then up at Stanley. "Dr Goodspeed, do you or Dr. Hunter have anything on the poison that was used?"

Stanley cleared his throat and stood up, still a little nervous speaking in front of a group after all these years, at least until he got warmed up to his subject.

"Yes sir. Each of the deaths appeared to be caused by sulphur poisoning, but the reactions each of the bodies went through are odd for that type of chemical, even in the amounts detected." Stanley had the sudden desire to pace around the table like Agent Thornton had but restrained himself. "The chemical was not injected, ingested or inhaled. The sulphur instead appears to have been absorbed through the skin, which is not an uncommon way for sulphur poisoning to occur, however skin absorption usually irritates the skin and turns it red and all of the bodies have instead turned blue."

Stanley momentarily flipped his attention back to the photo of the dead stationmaster before continuing. "Also the amount of sulphur in each of the victims ought to be impossible. I couldn't see being able to get that much into them through skin contact even if you dropped them into a vat of the stuff. As for the fact that each of the bodies have been, for all intents and purposes, mummified, I haven't even got a clue. Sulphur will act as a purgative, but not at that level, and probably only if swallowed, which doesn't appear to have happen here."

Dr. Goodspeed flipped to another part of the file and looked at it for a few moments before continuing. "There was an investigation into the possibility that the deaths were caused by some sort of freak environmental condition and many of the victims did work with or around equipment that could cause sulphur poisoning, but once again, not in the levels we're seeing here." And with a nervous little shrug Dr. Goodspeed concluded his speech and sat back down.

"Thank you Dr. Goodspeed." The assistant director said as he once again stood, looking over his people.

"As you can probably guess this group has been picked as a task force to head up the investigation into these deaths. Given the possible danger to national security these attacks pose, if they should be proven to be attacks, all holiday requests are currently suspended and all agents in this group are expected to be ready to leave by plane at 800 hours tomorrow morning."

No one groaned, but that was only because everyone there was too professional to do so.

"Dismissed."

Stanley hunched his shoulders slightly as he collected his papers. No double about it Carla was going to kill him.

--------000--------

"What do you mean your holiday has been cancelled?" Carla Goodspeed ground the words out between her teeth and Stanley cringed at each syllable.

"Carla, sweetie, baby I don't have any choice in the matter, the FBI says go and you go." Carla's frown at him deepened. "It will probably only be a few weeks at the most and I can get the time off after that." He said, looking hopeful.

"But I can't." Carla turned away from his and gave a little stomp around their living room. "And Kelsey will be back in school by then and we can't just go pulling her out after a few weeks."

"I know, I know, but there isn't anything I can do about it."

Carla gave a little sigh and flopped down on the couch. "I know, I don't have to like it, but I know."

Stanley sat down on the couch with his own sigh and Carla manoeuvred herself onto his lap.

"So, when do you have to leave?"

"Tomorrow morning. The plane leaves at 8:00 am."

Carla's forehead thunked against his shoulder and she gave out a muffled cry of annoyance. "Well at least it wasn't ten minutes after they called this time." She said with a little shake of her head.

"Come on, I'll help you pack and you can tell me where you're going and where you'll be staying." Carla crawled off of him as she said that and latching on to one of his hands helped to pull him to his feet.

"Thanks baby."


	3. Chapter 3

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Disclaimer: Nope, still don't own them. For full disclaimer please see Chapter 1.

Chapter 3

_I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity._

_-- __**Edgar Allan Poe**_

Johnny pulled into Fort Worth just as false dawn was giving way to the real thing.

Man he couldn't wait to get home and pass out in his own bed for a change. It had been so long since he'd slept on anything better than a motel bed ( and in the last six months he'd slept on a lot worse than that) that he'd forgotten what a real bed felt like. Traffic was still light at this time of morning, so it took little time to make his way through the outskirts of town and only a little longer to get through the slightly increased traffic as he reached the downtown core.

The towering buildings of Fort Worth's business area were still several blocks away from the quiet corner of Down Town Fort Worth that Johnny called home. The old brick warehouse looked much the same as it did six months ago as Johnny shut down Grace's engine and started to push her towards the freight elevator. Not that it should surprise him that it still looked the same; after all he'd been away on tour lots of time and never even considered that it should look different.

Of course that was before Mack had died here.

Johnny stopped for a moment and hung his head, remembering his best friend and mechanic. It was most definitely some sort of cosmic irony that the man who'd seemed to spend most of his time trying to talk Johnny out of the daredevil's more dangerous jumps had ended up being killed before him.

Sometimes Johnny wished he could punish Blackheart all over again.

"Ah, enough introspection." Johnny said again, a line that was quickly becoming as much a personal mantra to him as 'you can't live in fear' was.

He unlocked the elevator to his loft, something he didn't usually have to do because he'd generally just left the thing open, but since he hadn't known how long he was going to be away he had actually locked the thing when he'd left.

Mack would have been so happy, he'd complained about the elevator to Johnny every time he'd come over and found it unlocked.

Johnny snapped the door to the freight elevator opened with more force than he needed and wheeled Grace in, vowing to stop thinking about Mack. Once he secured Grace he closed the elevator a little more gently and hit the up button.

Opening the door at the top Johnny started at the lack of motorcycles lined up in his garage area before forcibly reminding himself that he'd sold off a number of them before heading off on his trip.

He used to have about a dozen bikes up here but now, aside from Grace there were only three left, and one of them was still trashed from the last time he'd crashed during a jump.

"I'm going to get some sleep." He told the motorcycle as he placed her in her own spot, thinking once again about how strange it would look to anyone else to see him talking to it. Of course that just meant they didn't know anything about Grace.

"Give me eight hours and something to eat and then I promise to spend the rest of the day giving you a tune up." The bike started up and gave a rev of agreement before shutting down again. Johnny gave her a sleepy wave and headed towards his bed, stripping off his riding leathers as he went.

--------000--------

Stanley Goodspeed stared sleepily out the window of the plane as they circled over Fort Worth waiting for landing clearance. He hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, what with the packing and the exuberant goodbye his wife had give him that night as well as a long explanation to his daughter Kelsey over why daddy had to go away sandwiched in-between. He'd also gone down to his basement office and done a little of his own special research for the case before heading to bed but two hours of going through those files hadn't turned up anything he could use. There was a lot about JFK's stay at the Hilton-Fort Worth yes, but little else.

Sometimes, no matter how unusual his personal files were they still didn't have all the answers.

He thought back, as he often did, to the day he'd come into ownership of those files. Had it really been over ten years since he'd followed Mason's instructions on his and Carla's wedding day and found the microfilm that held some of this countries most dangerous secrets from the first half of this century?

When he'd originally gotten hold of that expensive piece of film (it had cost Mason his freedom for most of his life) he had mostly seen it as a source of interesting trivia. Over the years he had come to realize just how dangerous some of this knowledge was and he'd been very careful about how he'd used it.

A few items that he felt would continue to do more harm than good by not being made known he'd managed to anonymously leak to the proper authorities.

However some things were better left buried and on top of that he was FBI himself and the thought of betraying that didn't sit well with him. So far any secrets that had involved the FBI as a main player he had left alone. Besides many of them were so far out of date that the only people who still cared were the conspiracy buffs.

Still that didn't mean he couldn't use the information himself, when it actually pertained to the situation.

However he didn't think that he would be telling anyone else about the possible parallels between this case and what everyone else thought of as the Rowell Landing back in the 40's. Besides even his files didn't seem to have a realistic picture of what had happened that night in New Mexico all those years ago, or at least he hoped what it said wasn't the truth because if it was than the world was even stranger than he'd ever thought it to be.

The pilot announced that they would be landing shortly and Stanley felt his stomach momentarily flip over as the plane began its descent. He checked his wristwatch and found that the time was coming up on 11:00 am.

As they were scheduled to meet with the Fort-Worth Police Department at 1:30 pm it should give them enough time to get through airport security and allow them the chance to get to their hotel and unpack before they had to be at the meeting.

Best laid plans, and all that.

--------000--------

Having had reoccurring insomnia for most of his life (after all spending most of your adult years worrying about the fact that you had apparently sold your soul to the devil can do that to a man) Johnny was pleasantly surprised to get in a good seven hours of sleep. A quick shower, several glasses of water (with the Ghost Rider for a bunk mate dehydration could become a way of life if you weren't careful) and fresh jeans and a t-shirt, both black of course, almost finished the job of waking him up.

A cup of coffee would have brought him all the way to human but looking around his bare kitchen netted him a collection of forgotten condiments in the refrigerator and a half full jar of jellybeans. And as much as he liked the candy it would be a poor substitute for coffee and breakfast.

Looking at his watch he suspected he should change that to coffee and lunch. Also if he was going to stay here for the next few weeks, or even just the next few days he'd need a few groceries.

He briefly considered taking Grace with him but there was a little coffee shop/lunch counter the block over that could do him a decent cup and a sandwich and there was a little grocery store nearby that he could at least get the basics at.

"I'm going to go grab some lunch and a few groceries. I'll be back in an hour or so." He yelled in Grace's direction as he headed towards the elevator.

The bike revved once in what he'd come to take as agreement and Johnny gave her a wave as the elevator headed down.

No double about it, as much as he loved Grace he really needed to talk to some real people.

--------ooo--------

Best laid plans indeed. Airport security had been backed up to sometime last Thursday and even with FBI clearance it had taken longer than Stanley had hoped to get everyone and their equipment off of the plane and loaded into the vans for the trip to the hotel.

After fighting their way through lunch time traffic all they'd had time to do was drop their luggage in their rooms at the Hilton and head back out, thoughts of lunch forgotten.

Okay, not really forgotten, more like mourned.

In the lobby, just before they were going to leave Agent Thornton split Dr. Hunter and a couple of other agents (Ruiz and Manning if he was remembering their names right) off from the rest of the group. He handed them what was obviously a warrant and spent a few minutes in quiet conversation with them before sending them off to their vehicle.

When the caravan of agents headed out Stanley noticed that wherever Dr. Hunter and his group were going it wasn't to the Fort Worth Police Department.

--------000--------

Johnny flipped through the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the daily newspaper he'd picked up on the way to the coffee shop as he sat at the lunch counter and attempted to inhale a club sandwich. He went over the crime section a couple of times looking for anything he might be able to help with. Even after six months on the road doing little else than finding and punishing the guilty he still felt compelled to seek out evil doers where ever they might be.

He snorted at himself as he flipped another page. Just when, he wondered, had his life gone and turned into a comic book.

Well comic book or not it was his life now. And given that he had chosen this life he had better get on with the getting of groceries and Grace's tune up if he was going to hit the streets looking for the presence of evil.

He almost groaned at the thought. At this rate he was going to end up having to join some sort of support group for terminally pretentious supernatural entities.

He finally gave up on the paper and folded it up to put aside. He finished the sandwich and coffee and stood up to pay.

"I wonder what a support group like that would charge as an entry fee?" he said, thinking out loud and startling a few people in the shop. He looked around and cringed slightly at everyone looking at him.

"Ah, sorry about that, just thinking out loud."

Everyone went back to their coffee and he shook his head as he as he left the shop.

He was more out of practice around people than he'd thought he'd be.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing. For full disclaimer please see Chapter 1.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter 4

_It ain't no sin if you crack a few laws now and then, just so long as you don't break any. _

_-- __**Mae West**_

Stanley managed to control his inborn need to fidget as he stared down a Police Captain who by his very expression believed Stanley's right to exist was nonexistent. The man hadn't even waited for him to introduce himself before he'd gotten an angry yet self satisfied smirk on his face and started to rant at him.

Really he was beginning to wonder just how much more spectacularly annoying this day was going to get.

That and he ought to learn not to be the first one through the door, especially when Agent Thornton should have been doing the initial meet and greet.

"I don't know what the hell you think you're up to Blaze but impersonating an FBI Agent is finally going to get you the jail time you deserve." Captain Dolan knew that Blaze was a few litres short of an oil change but now he'd really proven it.

"Sir, my name is Dr. Stanley Goodspeed." The agent said slowly and carefully, as if he were having a conversation with a rabid wolf.

"Blaze!"

"Goodspeed!"

Stanley and Dolan both started and looked around at a slightly fuming agent Thornton. "Goodspeed, I know you're incapable of working an operation without getting into some kind of an unholy mess but can't you even manage to get though the first day without landing in it?"

--------000--------

Dolan almost couldn't believe his luck. After all, he knew Blaze was strange, possibly even nuts but at least it was nuts in the way that most celebrities were all a little off their rockers.

But did the man really think he could walk into a police station filled with people who knew what he looked like and be able to pull off pretending to be a Federal Agent?

This, the detective thought, just proved that Blaze had something to do with the sulphur deaths. Why else would he attempt to sneak into the task force briefing if not to find out what they knew about them?

Strangely Dolan didn't believe that Blaze had actually intended to cause those deaths. While he might want to take the guy down he felt that Blaze was stupidly naive rather than evil. He'd always thought that it was more likely the man had gotten involved with something or someone who had caused the deaths rather than there being any active maliciousness on the biker's part.

Of course if it was a something rather than a someone it probably concerned that flaming motorcycle stunt that they still hadn't found a way to pin on Blaze. The man owned over a dozen bikes and not one of them, not even that old chopper he said had belonged to his dad that he'd just finished restoring matched the bike treads of that steel and fire monstrosity that had torn up his city six months ago.

One of these days he would find out where Blaze was hiding that bike, assuming he hadn't done the smart thing and reduced the thing to its component parts. While it would have been the intelligent thing to do Dolan doubted that Blaze had done it as he personally believed the cyclist was far too arrogant in his strangely naive way to believe he'd ever be caught. So when he found it, and he would, it would be the final nail that he would use to pin Blaze to the nearest jail cell wall.

But for now impersonating a Federal Agent would do nicely.

He was already reaching for the cuffs when Agent Thornton, a straight lace if ever he'd seen one called Blaze by the name he was trying to pass himself off as.

"Goodspeed, I know you're incapable of working an operation without getting into some kind of an unholy mess but can't you even manage to get though the first day without landing in it?"

"Sir?"

Captain Dolan just looked at the two of them, the expression on his face clearly showing his belief that they were trying to pull a fast one, and a rather lame one at that.

Thornton pulled his badge and ID out and opened it, letting the Captain take a good long look. "I'm Special Agent in Charge Harry Thornton." He cast a look at Stanley who quickly fumbled for his own ID, almost dropping the thing as he attempted to open it. "FBI Chemical Weapons Specialist Dr. Stanley Goodspeed."

Dolan's mouth opened and closed a few times as he tried to come up with his next sentence when suddenly the station was inundated with dark suited agents making the Police Captain feel like he'd just been dropped into a MIB convention.

Thornton snapped his ID closed. "We're here for the 1:30 briefing.

Dolan cast another glance at Dr. Goodspeed before gesturing for the group to follow him.

"This way, we're set up in the conference room on the left.

Detective Edwards did a double take when Goodspeed walked into the conference room and Stanley frowned at the reaction, beginning to get very worried about just who he was being mistaken for.

Edwards stared at Goodspeed for a few more moments before shifting his attention to his Captain.

"Sir?"

Dolan just shrugged. "These are Special Agents Thornton and Goodspeed." Edwards looked at Stanley again, the disbelief on his face making the agent shift uncomfortably in the seat he had just taken.

"If everyone will take their seats Detective Edwards will start the briefing. I'll be back to continue it momentarily."

--------000--------

Johnny had stopped off at the food store after lunch and had just finished putting away his groceries (a box of frosted cheerio's, two loaves of bread, a pound of butter, a container of honey, a large jug of milk and another of orange juice, three bananas, five apples, a pound of sliced roast beef for making sandwiches with, six glass bottles of root beer, a pound of coffee, a box of sugar cubes and a new jar of mustard) when he heard the elevator moving.

Frowning he headed over to it to see who was coming up. He shook his head slightly as he imagined Mack once again telling him to keep the thing locked.

When the door to the lift opened he tallied a point on Mack's side of the score board. Two men and a woman stood there. All three of them, even the slightly nervous one in the middle were so obviously Federal Agents that it seemed like they had neon signs over their heads announcing the fact.

"Um, hi?"

All three of the agents looked at him like he was slightly mad, a look that Johnny was becoming increasingly used to.

"Stanley what the hell are you doing here, and why are you in civvies?" The previously nervous agent asked him.

"Um," Johnny's mind blanked out as he tried to come up with an answer to a question that didn't make any sense.

The agent gave a little dismissive wave of his hand. "Never mind, you know Stanley it's a damn good thing this warrant was issued for earlier this morning or your being here ahead of time would have royally screwed our pooch." The agent stopped as a slightly horrified expression crossed his face. "Please tell me you didn't start searching the place before we got here with the warrant."

"Ah, nope, no searching done here. Besides I just came up a few minutes before you all arrived." Warrant, Johnny thought, what warrant, why a warrant, what could they possibly be searching for that the police hadn't already gone through six months ago?

Johnny's heart gave a slight lurch as he wondered if despite all his paranoia he'd been found out sometime during the last six months.

"What does the warrant cover?"

"Oh, here," And the still nameless agent handed Johnny a folded piece of paper before heading over to the two other agents who had already started searching.

Johnny read the official piece of double talk over, coming to the conclusion that it was very similar to the one that had been used last time. Therefore it seemed they were still spinning their wheels over the murders Blackheart had committed and weren't looking to connect him with the Ghost Rider, or at least not with anything he had done as the Ghost Rider in the last six months.

Johnny grimaced as two of them started to go through his piles of books. No one ever reacted well to his collection. The mix of religion, metaphysics and demonology tended to make people downright skittish around him. The agents would probably read a whole lot of things into them that would paint him as even stranger than usual.

Although given his night time activities he wasn't sure they could ever imagine just how strange.

"Hey," one of the other agents called out with his head in the refrigerator. "The fridge has fresh food in it." He pulled out the milk and investigated the unopened pull strip and the freshness dating. "The milks new too, I thought Thornton said this guy pulled a disappearing trick six months ago."

Johnny shrugged in his direction, becoming distinctly uncomfortable with the fact that he hadn't come clean about his identity with the agents and no longer knowing how to do so without getting into even bigger trouble than he obviously already was.

"Maybe he got homesick," he said as he started to sidle sideways towards the elevator.

The three agents snort laughed at Johnny's statement, although to be honest he hadn't been trying to be funny.

"Well you guys and uh, woman look like you've got the searching thing all wrapped up on your own so I'm just going to um, head back." Of course it would have helped if he knew just where back was but he couldn't do much about that.

"Sure Stanley, go annoy Thornton for us." And Johnny walked a controlled pace to the elevator doing so to avoid giving in to the desire to bolt toward it. As he passed Grace he gave her a 'please be good and don't freak out the nice Federal Agents' pat on her handle bars before making it to the safety of the elevator. Sliding the doors closed he hit the down button with a silent sigh of relief.

He wasn't sure why there was this sudden renewal of interest in him, but he suspected he'd better get a hold of his lawyer. At the very least he'd probably need to apologize for what had just happened and doing so through a third party would probably be a lot safer. Briefly he considered calling Roxanne but while he really wanted to talk to and see her again being in trouble wasn't the situation he wanted to use to get the two of them together. Besides given the new official interest in him it would probably be best to keep her out of things.

Unfortunately his lawyer was in New York, but he had been really impressed with the man when he'd managed to get him released six months ago and if Murdock wasn't able to help him this time than maybe he'd at least be able to suggest someone here who could help.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: They're not mine, just borrowing. For full disclaimer please see Chapter 1.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter 5

_Ask not for whom the bell tolls: You might get an answer you don't especially like._

_**-- Earnst Angst**_

Captain Dolan shook his head in bemused shock at the fax a friend of his at the Bureau had sent him.

Federal Agent Dr. Stanley Goodspeed really did exist and he was the spitting image of Johnny Blaze. He had to wonder if anyone had read the files he'd sent. Even if no one in the group of Feds was a serious motorcycle jump fan someone should have noticed that their chemical guy was a dead ringer for only suspect they had for the murders.

Dolan headed back to the briefing room, coming in just in time to hear Edwards wrapping up the autopsy findings on the first bodies and the agents struggling to stay conscious in the face of information they had probably already gone over a half dozen times themselves.

"Thank you Edwards, I'll take over from here." Dolan said and the agents who were just starting to slump at the table perked up with hopeful looks on their faces.

"The rest of the autopsy results are pretty much the same for each victim, baring the general health and sex of each of them. Your folders have the results from all of the reports, so unless you have any specific questions about any of the victims I think we'll move on to other matters." No one offered to break the silence that followed.

Dolan asked Edwards to turn off the lights as he started up the slide projector to show the photos of the different crime scenes. Mentally he rubbed his hands together, anticipating one very interesting photo that should really wake up the gathered agents.

"This is the Broken Spoke Saloon." The picture of a squat and square wooden building decorated with the skulls of dead animals and a row of motorcycles parked outside of it lit up the screen. "This is what the inside of the Saloon looked like when we first got there." The interior of the bar was dismal, made even more so by the shrivelled blue corpses that sat at the tables, littered the floors and were curled up in agonized death at the bar. Several of the agents flinched at the sight.

"This is some of the interesting things to see downtown." Melted asphalt, broken windows, parking metres heat twisted into modern art and cars that appeared to have been set on fire and then tossed around by a temper tantrum throwing giant of a child met their eyes.

"This is some of the interesting sights you can see if you like train stations." The picture of the front of a crushed tractor-trailer with something that looked almost like claw marks was quickly followed by the eerie photo of the dead stationmaster.

"This is what happens when jail cells suddenly combust." A picture of a jail cell, the floor wet from the sprinklers and unconscious bodies scatter everywhere was next. The agents all tilted their heads as one as they attempted to take a sideways look at the part of the cell bars that appeared to have melted.

"This is the happy meeting between an incredibly illegal flaming stunt cycle and a skyscraper." Shattered concrete and broken windows went all the way up the building and everyone tried to work out just how someone could do all of that with just a motorcycle, unless the flaming part meant it had exploded.

"And this is what happens when you're friends with the wrong person." The picture of a blue and mummified Randall 'Mack' Mackenzie appeared.

"And this is the only person we've been able to connect to any of this." Dolan said that last with a smile as the booking picture for one Johnny Blaze lit the screen.

Agent Goodspeed really did make some amusing choking noises.

--------000--------

Johnny found himself back at the coffee shop with a cup of the previously mentioned liquid in one hand and a cell phone in another. His luck was running in its usual groove as he'd found out that Murdock was in court at the moment so he left an urgent message with the lawyer's partner for him to call him. He reeled off his current cell phone number to the man who promised to pass it along as soon as Matt walked in the door although he told him that it would probably be at least a couple of hours if not more before he could get back to him. Johnny thanked him and hung up. He drank up his coffee, deciding to head over to Sundance Square to kill the time before he could talk to Murdock since he couldn't go back to the loft right now.

He wandered the entertainment area named for the infamous Sundance Kid checking out the movie theatres to see if there was anything worth watching. One of them was showing a cop/chimpanzee buddy movie that was obviously aimed at the family audience and it was just about to start. Johnny took it as a sign that this was the perfect place to spend the next hour and a half or so and happily bought a ticket to the show and a bag of jellybeans at the concession to enjoy it with.

--------000--------

"What in the name of Zeus' Butt Hole is going on?"

Agent Goodspeed's profanity was almost as funny as the strange choking noises but it still seemed to fully express the situation.

Dolan fought to keep the smirk off his face as he continued. "This is Johnny Blaze, motorcycle daredevil and official pain in my ass. He's managed to skate on everything we've tried to throw at him and he, or at least his lawyer has managed to head off a few items we hadn't thought of at the time. Edwards, light please."

The lights came up and every person in the room was looking at Stanley.

"Agent Goodspeed, you don't happen to have a twin brother you've never told anyone about have you?" Agent Thornton asked the gob smacked man.

Stanley looked at him, his eyes slightly glazed. "Uh, no sir, I don't even have non twin like siblings."

"Do you mind if I ask how you didn't know about Dr. Goodspeed's uncanny likeness to our only suspect?" Dolan asked Thornton.

"The files you sent didn't include a picture of him."

Dolan looked over at Edwards, who shrugged expansively.

"It was supposed to be included." The detective said, uncertain as to what had happened.

"And no one actually knew what Blaze looked like?"

"Actually," one of the agents stated, "Blaze never does interview and in all of his publicity shots he's almost always wearing a motorcycle helmet or a cowboy hat and heavy duty sunglasses. When I first meet Goodspeed I thought he looked a little like him but I didn't realize the resemblance was so pronounced."

--------000--------

As the lights went down in the theatre Johnny wondered if he hadn't made another stupendous mistake for the day.

His 'powers' for want of a better word were not completely under his control and at first they would only work at night and in the presence of evil. Actually 'work' was another loose way of thinking about them. At first he had no control over the change. If it was night and there was evil then Ghost Riders appearance was a done deal.

Dealing with Blackheart showed him two things about that power. One, if he really, really had to he could fight the change, but it wasn't easy. Two, it didn't have to be night. Dark shadows or as one startled thief had found out when he'd tried to rob Johnny's motel room while Johnny had been sleeping a darkened room with the natural lighting blocked would work as well.

And a movie theatre definitely came in under the heading of a darkened room with the natural lighting blocked.

Plus he didn't think that the light from the projector would be enough to stop the change, unless he was standing in front of the screen, something the other theatre patrons would probably seek to discourage.

Five minutes into the coming soon features he started to relax as his alter ego hadn't even twitched. Almost everyone in the theatre was a kid, the few adults in the crowd were here to watch over them as well as spend the afternoon with their children.

Everyone here was safe and innocent.

And all that changed just a few minutes later.

The opening credits were just fading away when a latecomer made his way down the aisle. As he passed by Johnny felt his internal thermometer spike upwards and a voice that sounded like the clashing of metal and fire whispered in the back of his mind.

_Guilty._

Johnny forced the voice back, maybe it was right about the guy but he wasn't doing anything right now, he was just here to watch a mov...

By the light of the projector Johnny watched as the guy slipped sideways down a row, sitting next to one of the few children who were in the theatre by themselves. The man leaned over to say something to the kid, giving anyone who watched that feeling that this was just the boy's dad who had been held up parking the car or something.

Johnny wasn't buying it.

Johnny watched the backs of their heads for another ten minutes or so, becoming more and more uncomfortable but unable to figure out why. He started to sweat as Ghost Rider pushed harder to be let out and as there was no way he was going to change in a theatre full of children he was just about to leave when the young boy stood up suddenly and practically bolted down his row of seats and up the aisle. He opened the door to the theatre hard enough that it banged against the wall, causing patrons to look around for a moment before they dismissed the noise as an overactive child.

The guy who had been sitting with him sat frozen for a few seconds, and then quickly headed out himself.

And Johnny followed.

--------000--------

Kyle sobbed as he threw up into one of the sinks in the theatre's washroom, emptying his stomach of the popcorn he had just eaten. He turned on the tap, rinsing his mouth out and wished he could do the same with his mind. He could still hear the man's voice whispering things as he... Kyle's mind shied away from the thought and he brushed at his body like he was trying to get rid of something slimy that was still clinging to him.

"Had too many snacks I see."

Kyle's body jerked at the sound of that voice. The guy had followed him and worse, he hadn't even heard him come in. The boy looked over at his tormentor and was shocked at how normal the guy looked. Somehow in the dark the guy had taken on a more diabolic appearance then the good ole boy next door neighbour look the guy was sporting.

"Leave me alone."

"Now you don't really mean that, after all we were having so much fun, you and I."

Kyle swallowed as bile rushed his throat but he held it back not wanting to throw up again, unwilling to turn his back on this man to do so.

"He said leave him alone."

Kyle shook slightly as another man, dressed in dark clothing and a metal studded black leather jacket came around the little wall that provided privacy to the washroom whenever the door was opened. The man stared hard at the good ole boy, threw a worried look at Kyle and then checked the room over, becoming fixated on the light switch for some reason.

"Hey, there's no problem here, the boy just had too much popcorn and it isn't sitting well, isn't that right?"

Kyle was horrified to hear himself agreeing with the guy but the thought of trying to explain what had just happened, even to a stranger made him want to throw up all over again.

"Then maybe he should get someone to come and pick him up and take him home."

God no, having to explain to his Mom why he had to come home early, no way was he going to do that.

"I'm fine," he said, his voice hoarse from throwing up. "All better now."

The guy in the leathers looked at him a few moments before nodding. "Then you should go back in, you're missing the show."

Kyle edged around the good ole boy and did the same when he reached Johnny. He was on the safe side of the slowly closing bathroom door when the heard the guy spinning some bull about how he was just looking out for him and Kyle bolted back into the theatre, choosing to sit next to a woman and her three hyperactive daughters for the rest of the movie.

--------000--------

The guy moved to leave the bathroom and Johnny moved with him, placing himself between him and the door.

"Hey, I don't know what your problem is but I was just worried about the kid. The way he bolted out of there I figured he was sick or something.

Johnny nodded at that. "Or something. What did you do to him?"

"Nothing, I told you I was just worried about him. Now if you don't mind I'm going to go back in and watch the rest of the movie."

"I mind."

"Listen jerk off I don't know who you think you are but I know that you don't have any idea of who you're messing with."

Johnny back up a couple of steps towards the wall and the guy smirked, figuring he'd finally scared him off.

"No, your right I don't know who you are, but I do know what you are."

"Really, what would that be? The guy asked with an attempt at menace in his voice."

And Johnny flipped off the light switch.

"**Guilty."**


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: Once again, this is your brain on fanfiction... oops, wrong disclaimer. Once again, I don't own them, I won't make any money from this, it's is just for fun. No suing please.

Author's note: This is a bit short, I'll see if I can't get the next one up a bit sooner to compensate.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

by Colleen

Chapter 6

_One of irony's greatest accomplishments is that one cannot punish the wrongdoing of another without committing a wrongdoing himself. _

_**-- Anonymous**_

Kyle had just about stopped shaking when the movie ended. He stayed in his seat even as the Mom and her three bouncy daughters left as the end credits started. He sat through all the credits, not even noticing the last silly joke scene that flashed across the screen at the end of them.

He was too scared to move.

Tears threatened to overspill his eyes and he wiped at them angrily. He was just a stupid, dumb ass cry-baby.

"Are you okay kid?"

Kyle started and threw a terrified look towards the man who sat several seats away from him. Every nerve in his body was on overdrive and stayed there even when he realized that it was the guy in black leather and not...the other guy.

"Yeah, sure." He rubbed his face again, willing away the tears.

"Uh, huh." The guy just looked at him for a few moments. "You didn't do anything wrong you know."

"Of course I know I just ate too much popcorn." Kyle said angrily.

"Kid... What's your name anyway?"

"Why do you want to know?" Darn it, why didn't he leave with the Mom and the three girls?

"Just didn't think you'd want me to keep calling you kid."

Kyle glared at him and Johnny smiled a little at the reaction. Better that the kid got angry about what had happened. Angry might let him get past it while scared could cripple him until he started to blame himself for what had happened rather than laying the fault at the feet of true guilty party.

"Kid, you don't have to tell me what happened but take it from one who knows, secrets like that will eat you up inside and spit you out like watermelon seeds. Talk to someone, or if there isn't someone you trust than at least try one of those kid help lines."

The boy looked away from him as if trying desperately to ignore him and Johnny sighed.

"Anyway I thought I'd just let you know that guy won't be bothering you again. In fact I doubt you'll ever see him again."

Kyle snorted. "Yeah, right. What did you do, kill him?" He said, his voice mostly condescending and yet just a little hopeful.

Johnny just smiled again, although it was a touch sad this time. "He wishes."

The ushers came in then to clean up the theatre before the next show and Kyle was surprised they hadn't been in sooner. Usually they were waiting in the back of the theatre even before the end of the credits.

The boy threw one more look at Johnny and headed out the empty side of the seat row. Kyle was sure he could feel the guy's eyes on him as he walked up the aisle to the theatre's door but felt some measure of safety in the thought that he wouldn't try anything with the ushers in the theatre.

Not that he had tried anything, it was just that at the moment Kyle wasn't inclined to give anyone the benefit of a doubt.

When he hit the lobby he realized why the ushers had been delayed.

Eyes wide he watched as the good ole boy was strapped onto a gurney by a pair of medics for his ride to the ambulance parked outside the door. Looking at the shaking, drooling piece of slime Kyle started to shake himself, only this was out of relief, not fear.

He didn't know what the other guy had done but Kyle was pretty sure he was right. That bastard wouldn't be bothering him again; in fact from the looks of it he wouldn't be bothering anyone, ever.

--------000--------

Stanley tracked down Waldo, Ruiz and Manning at the Fort Worth field office. Since Waldo was his partner he'd been tagged to help brief them on the meeting they had missed. When the three agents saw him however they all did a double take, making him wonder if they hadn't already gotten the news about his possibly evil biker twin.

"What?"

Waldo just shrugged. "Nothing, I was just wondering what was with all the costume changes today."

"What costume changes?"

"Come on, I mean first you're in a suit, then your all in black with a black leather jacket and then you're back in a suit, what gives."

"Black leather?"

--------000--------

Murdock finally called Johnny back just as he was leaving the theatre via the back entrance.

"Mr. Blaze, how may I help you?"

"I think I may have done a rather stupid thing."

"Define 'stupid.'"

"I'm back in Fort Worth and three people came up to my loft unannounced. I think they were Federal Agents and they had a warrant with them."

"You 'think' they were Federal Agents, didn't they identify themselves?"

"No, but they didn't seem to know who I was, in fact they seemed to believe that I was a fellow agent and I didn't tell them differently."

"No, that wasn't exactly a smart thing to do. You said they had a warrant?"

"Yeah, it was pretty much like the one I got six months ago."

"Did you interfere with their search?"

"Nope, I just got out of there as quickly as I could and then I phoned you." Johnny decided to neglect mentioning where he'd been while waiting for Murdock to return his call. It was bad enough that the kid knew he'd done something to that guy, no need to let his lawyer know as well. Besides it wasn't like it had anything to do with the current problem... hopefully.

"Good. I'll see what I can find out from this end. If need be I'll fly down in the morning, although I hope it won't come to that."

"Thanks, I appreciate it."

"Wait until you get my bill."

--------000--------

"Agent Thornton, I think we have a situation." Dr. Goodspeed said as Thornton entered the conference room to assist with the briefing.

"Do tell."

"Hunter, Ruiz and Manning all saw me at Blazes apartment while I was at the briefing."

"Really? Dolan said Blaze took off as soon as he was able to six months ago," Thornton said, wondering how he could use this piece of information.

"Agent Thornton." The five of them all turned to see one of the office's receptionists at the briefing room door. "A Mr. Matt Murdock is on the phone, he says he's the lawyer for a Johnny Blaze and he would like to know why three of our people invaded Mr. Blazes loft without identifying themselves as federal agents."

Apparently he wouldn't be able to use that at all.

--------000--------

By the time they had gone over things with Blazes lawyer, who was one seriously well prepared man who during the entire phone conversation never got angry and yet still managed to convey just how badly he could hang the group of them out to dry, briefed Hunter, Ruiz and Manning, who had cracked a number of bad jokes about Goodspeed's evil twin and were no doubt even now coming up with ones to use tomorrow and than returned to the hotel it was well passed the normal supper hour and Stanley was prepared to eat his shoe leather if he didn't get real food soon.

He striped off his suit coat, tossed it on a chair and crashed on his bed, arms outspread. He felt the hotel room he shared with Waldo spin around him a little as the day and lack of food caught up with him and he considered his current options. One, order in room service. Two, head to Cafe Texas the restaurant in the hotel, or three, hit the phone book and order take out, which was probably all his per diem could handle.

A knock at the door had him dragging his weary, hungry ass off the bed and over to the door to answer it. What was on the other side woke him up completely.

"Daddy."


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: If you recognise it then it doesn't belong to me. Heck, sometimes even if you don't recognise it, it may still not belong to me. Either way this is for fun and I won't be making any money off of it. Please, no suing.

Author's note: As promised, a new chapter at least 80 per cent sooner than the last. (Your mileage may vary).

Author's note 2: I've done a little fixing to this chapter. Commas and I have a very uneasy relationship, something I've tried to fix but, haven't had much luck with. I've been letting my grammer check take out commas when it tells me I don't need them but, I think the thing has issues so I've gone through this again in an attempt to break up any run on sentences I may have caused. I may have over fixed it, so sorry if that has happend.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter 7

_Routine maintenance should never be neglected._

_--__** Quotes on Motorcycle Wisdom (Unknown**_

Stanley staggered slightly as he caught his exuberant ten year old daughter and looked up to see his smugly smiling wife behind her.

He should have known Carla had taken his sudden trip too calmly. He should have known she was planning something like this. Darn it, why didn't he ever listen to his instincts when it came to his family?

Okay, it was probably because most of his instincts were geared towards diffusing chemical weapons of minor and mass destruction but, couldn't he set a few aside to deal with family matters?

"Hi baby, miss us?"

"Caaarrrrrrla."

"Stuff it honey, there was no way you were getting out of this vacation, even if you have to work during most of it."

Stanley huffed a little and looked down at his daughter who was looking from him to her mom and back again with a worried expression on her face.

He smiled down at her and gave her a little hug. With his arm still around her shoulder he grabbed up his suit jacket from the chair he'd tossed it on earlier.

"Well I hope you're both hungry because I haven't eaten since breakfast this morning," he said as he ushered his two favourite ladies out of the room and towards the elevator. "I've heard the restaurant here does a decent steak and south-western cooking."

Steak, the thought alone was enough to forgive anything, as well as make his mouth water.

--------000--------

Johnny eyed the interior of his loft, looking to see if anything had been taken away or moved but he wasn't able to tell. At least they hadn't messed the place up; in fact it seemed a little cleaner than when he'd left. His piles of books were neater at any rate.

Johnny could almost feel how annoyed Grace was at the current turn of events and he shrugged at her before grabbing an apple out of the refrigerator to munch on while he worked. He'd promised Grace a tune up and by golly she was going to get one. Besides he'd already thwarted one evil doer today and going out tonight didn't really appeal to him any longer.

He pulled on a set of coveralls, broke out his tools and after giving the old girl a comforting pat and an apology for taking off earlier started to work, briefly wondering if he ought to be doing similar maintenance on Grace when she was in Hellcycle mode.

A thought he dismissed as ludicrous, even though it did amuse him somewhat.

--------000--------

Yup, that was a good meal, although to be honest Stanley suspected that even the shoe leather would have come across as a good meal by then. Stanley looked down at the afore mentioned shoes, turning one foot so the reflected ceiling lights bounced along its surface.

Nah, the polish on them would probably have tasted terrible.

At dinner Stanley found out that Carla had booked a suite in the same hotel, although they hadn't been able to get one on the same floor as Stanley's room as the FBI had pretty much taken over the entire space.

Of course Stanley was going to move rooms just as soon as he could grab his stuff. Thankfully he hadn't had a chance to unpack. He'd also have to let Waldo know that he'd have the room to himself and figure out when to meet his partner in the morning.

"So what's the plan for tomorrow?" He asked, almost afraid to find out what his wife had worked up.

"Well you are going to join us in the morning for a room service breakfast." Carla said, smiling at him. "No bagel and a coffee on the way out the door for you. And once you're off to work Kelsey and I are going out sightseeing."

"Cowgirl Museum." Kelsey said, bouncing in place slightly.

"Including the Cowgirl Museum." Carla agreed. "I'll assume that lunch is a bust but we'll try to meet up for dinner and some more sightseeing, or a movie afterwards if there's time."

Stanley nodded. "Sounds like a plan. I can't promise much on my part but, we'll give it a try."

"Try hard honey, try very hard."

--------000--------

Johnny sat back with a satisfied sigh as he finished putting Grace back together again. He'd gone over everything and even though she didn't really need it he'd replaced the plugs, plug wires, points, condenser, air cleaner and in-line fuel filter. She'd run better for it and he wouldn't have to worry about her for a few more months. Not that that ever seemed to stop him as worrying was what he did best. He rubbed his hands together, suddenly cold as if the thought of worry had chilled him.

"That really is a nice bike."

Stiffening Johnny turned towards the voice behind him. "What do you want?" Johnny's breath plumed out in a white mist and he could have kicked himself for not realizing why it had gotten so cold so fast.

"Now Johnny, is that anyway to treat an old friend?"

Johnny looked the Devil in the eye, quite literally, but said nothing. Mephistopheles smirked and walked a circling path around Johnny and Grace, his cane making a solid strike against the floor on each step.

"What do you want?" Johnny asked again through gritted teeth.

"Why, just to pass on a little important information, that's all." the Devil said, circling closer.

"Don't do me any favours," Johnny paused a moment. "Ever."

"Humph. And here I thought you might want to know about a little side trip Blackheart made before you two meet. Although if you don't care about the deaths of thousands of people, than I guess it doesn't really matter."

Johnny hands curled up into fists and he gritted his teeth even harder, seriously in danger of cracking the enamel. Briefly he wondered why Ghost Rider wasn't clambering to get out, but suspected it was either because Mephistopheles had made him what he was or because the sheer force of the cold he projected countered out his heat.

Or maybe it was just because there was no soul there for him to punish.

"No?" Mephistopheles asked, starting to back away.

Forcibly Johnny unclenched both his fists and his teeth. He might not want anything to do with the demon in front of him but, if he was telling even a small part of the truth he would have to find out what he was talking about.

"Just tell me."

"Not even a please?"

Johnny just stared at him.

"Humph, very well, it seems Blackheart set up a contingency plan if you will. A little something to keep my attention when he took the power of the contract for himself."

Johnny frowned at that. "So why hasn't it already happened?"

The Devil shrugged. "Possibly his death delayed the event, or more likely his 'partner' chose to stay his hand and wait for a more opportune moment." Another shrug. "Or perhaps both."

"Right, so exactly why would you care that thousands of people might by killed and just what do you want me to do about it?"

Mephistopheles snorted. "I care only because I have no intention of having anything my little whelp planned come to fruition. As to what I want you to do, I want you find Blackheart's partner and stop him from using what he left with him, before he uses it to bring about the hell on Earth my son was attempting to create for himself."

"Well then could you perhaps drop me a frikken clue as to who this partner is?" Johnny said, his patience just about at an end.

The Devil smirked and turned, slowly walking away. "He prefers the name Deathwatch, a pretentious, if accurate name however most humans know him as Stephen Lords." The Devil looked back at Johnny, still smirking. "I'd suggest you find him soon," and then he was gone, as if he'd been nothing more than a figure of dark smoke blown away by a gentle breeze.

--------000--------

Family breakfast the next morning was a lot of fun. Kelsey had of course insisted on waffles, which both he and more importantly Carla agreed on as long as it came with a side of fruit, some orange juice and a big glass of milk.

Kelsey of course drowned the thing in syrup, but she did eat all of the fruit and drink all of her milk. Besides they were on vacation and strict healthy eating could take a holiday with them for a day or two.

Stanley was just finishing up his coffee when Waldo gave him a call from the lobby and told him to get his rear end in gear. He gave his wife and daughter a quick goodbye kiss each and left them as they started to argue about what they would to go see first on their sightseeing trip.

He met Waldo in the lobby, who just shook his head at him before leading him out of the hotel to their car. They had drawn the short end of the stick this morning and were about to start a fun filled day of touring six month old crime scenes. It was unlikely that they would find anything that hadn't already been noted and dissected but, theirs not to reason why and all that.

--------000--------

Carla and Kelsey came to an agreement. They would spend the morning at the National Cowgirl Museum and then grab lunch before spending the afternoon shopping their way through Sundance Square.

The museum, Carla had to admit, had been a lot of fun. Both educational and entertaining and the Ride Around the World Imax film had been a nice addition, especially for her horse crazy daughter. They rounded the morning out with the required souvenir purchase in the gift shop, where Kelsey got a Cowgirl University shirt and Carla put her foot down hard over the pleas for an $800.00 Cowboy hat, promising her that they would be sure to find one even better during their shopping trip in the afternoon.

They grabbed a taxi back to the Square and were just settling on a pleasant little restaurant with an outdoor patio when, much to her surprise and shock, her husband walked right past them without even saying a word.

--------000--------

Johnny was considering giving into a foul mood. He had spent the morning at the library going through old newspapers and surfing the public access computers. He hadn't come up with anything on the name Deathwatch, except for the beetles and a five year old movie. As for Stephen Lords... the man was some kind of high level business man, but what exactly his business was Johnny hadn't been able to tell. It seemed like whatever it was that the guy really did was buried under a lot of man about town, charity party, whatnot crap.

Worse the guy was based in New York. If that was where the trouble was than he was screwed. Not that he couldn't get there if he wanted to. Grace was great on the highway in either of her forms, but the only times he'd ever been in the Big Apple were the few times he had toured his jump show there and it had been at least three years since he'd done that. It just wasn't very often that he went that far east. Even during his last six months on the road the closest he'd gotten to the east coast was West Virginia.

"Stanley!"

A woman's very annoyed and very loud voice cut through his contemplations and he cringed slightly, wondering who the poor guy was who had ticked her off that badly.

"Stanley!"

Boy was that guy ever in for it.

A hand grabbed his arm and spun him around and he tensed for a physical confrontation. Therefore he was rather surprised to find a small, beautiful woman glaring at him.

"Stanley what the hell do you think you're doing?"


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: I don't own them... darn it. For full disclaimer please see Chapter 1.

Author's note: A bit short again, but I'm going to try to push ahead with this story for awhile so there should hopefully be more soon.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place 

By Colleen

Chapter 8

_Life goes faster on protein. _

_--__** Martin H. Fischer**_

"Stanley, what the hell do you think you're doing? Why are you here and why are you dressed like... that?" The lovely if irate woman asked, waving a hand at the black leather pants, black tee-shirt and of course black leather jacket he was wearing.

Johnny felt much like a stunned fish, his mouth opening and closing without any sound coming out. The first thing he thought was 'not again.' His second thought was that there was no way he was going to let this happen again. Being mistaken for someone else once was bad enough but he wasn't going to let it happen a second time.

A sudden look of horror crossed the woman's face and he thought that she must have just realized her mistake. Johnny was ready to back away from her and attempt to reassure her, just as soon as she let go. Instead she grabbed the lapels of his jacket and pulled him even closer to her, showing more strength than her small frame had hinted at.

"Oh my God, are you under cover, did I just mess it up?"

Undercover? "Uh, no, no, its okay, the undercover part is all done with." Wait a minute, what the hell was he doing? Just tell her that he wasn't who she thought he was and get the hell out of here.

She smiled suddenly and Johnny was surprised at how even more lovely she became. Not that she held a candle to Roxanne in his heart but, he could consider this Stanley, whoever he was, to be a very lucky guy.

"Great," she said, "then you can have lunch with us."

And before he could say anything she'd grabbed him by the arm and was dragging him towards a little girl, who was standing uncertainly by an outdoor restaurant.

The woman was scarily efficient and she had them sitting at a table with menus in hand before he could even think to string two words of protest and explanation together.

The little girl didn't say anything; she just stared at her silverware setting with a concerned look on her face. Johnny thought it was strange, as he suspected that she was normally as exuberant as her mother.

Johnny hid behind his menu as the lovely lady launched into a recounting of their morning and he was considering causing some kind of a distraction and just bolting when she suddenly stood up. "Honey, when the waiter comes order me the chicken quesadillas, she said before heading off towards the bathrooms.

Leaving Johnny all alone with a ten year old girl he didn't even know.

If it hadn't been for her he would have taken off right then and there, but after seeing what could happen to a child alone the other day at the theatre he wasn't willing to abandon her, even for the few minutes her mom would be in the washroom.

Johnny looked at her, shifted uncomfortably and then looked back at his menu. If he and Roxanne had gotten together all those years ago. If he hadn't made a colossal mistake that culminated with him becoming the Ghost Rider, then they would probably have children the age of this little girl right now.

"You're not my dad, are you?"

Johnny jumped at the sound of her voice and looked at her. Something in her eyes, a kind of knowledge perhaps, told him to not even consider lying.

"Uh, no."

"Why didn't you say so?"

"Well...You know your mom?" She nodded.

"Well, she kind of scares me."

"Oh." And she nodded again as if that explained everything. "Okay."

He looked at her rather surprised and she looked back, now apparently completely at ease with him. The tableau held until the waiter came over to demand Johnny's attention and he checked the menu over once more before he ordered the chicken quesadilla for... the Mom, the steak fajitas for himself and a plate of fettuccini Alfredo for his young companion at her insistence.

"So you like Italian food, I take it?" He asked as the waiter left to fill their order.

She just shrugged and played with her fork.

"Do you live here?" She asked suddenly.

"Here?"

"In Texas."

"Well yes, I do."

Her eyes lit up at that. "Do you have horses? Do you know any real cowboys or cowgirls? Do you live on a ranch? Do you ever go too...?

"Whoa, whoa, slow down." Johnny said, holding up his hands as it to fend off the barrage of questions. "Let's see, if I take the questions backwards than no I don't live on a ranch, I have a loft here in town. I did know a real cowboy but he was very old and he recently passed on." It was the best way he could think of to explain both Carter Slade and his final ride to someone. "And I don't have any horses, I keep motorcycles instead.

She made a slightly unhappy look, something between a pout and a grimace. "You don't keep motorcycles like horses, they're not alive."

Johnny's eyebrows went up at that statement. "Well I wouldn't tell my motorcycle that, she would be very insulted to be told she wasn't alive."

She stared at him like he was trying to spoof her. "How could a motorcycle be alive?"

Well, Johnny thought, first you sell your soul to the Devil... He shook the thought out of his head. "I'm not really sure. For a long time she was just a motorcycle, a very special motorcycle but still just a motorcycle and then the next day she was alive."

She thought about it for a few moments, and then her face brightened. "So she's like Herbie."

"Herbie?" Johnny asked, confused for a moment. Then he remembered the afternoons of his youth spent watching old Disney movie double features in slightly run down theatres in some of the little towns the carnie had played in. "Oh, the Love Bug, yes I guess she's sort of like Herbie."

"Only she's a girl, right?"

"Very much so, her name is Grace," he paused for a moment, "and my name is Johnny."

"Oh, I'm Kelsey, my mom is Carla and my dad is Stanley, not that I ever call them Carla and Stanley because really they're Mom and Dad but you can't call them that and can I meet Grace sometime?"

Johnny tightened his lips in an attempt not to laugh outright at the young girl, the change from suspicion, to trust and exuberance amusing him. "I don't know, maybe." He looked around the restaurant and noticed Carla making her way through the tables. "I'd better tell your mom who I am now."

"Oh, I don't think I'd do that if I were you, she'd be even scarier."

Johnny grimaced at that thought and just smiled at Carla as she made it back to her seat. He fidgeted with his napkin and let her talk about what plans they had for the afternoon. He was thankful that the food came in quick order and he kept his mouth full in an attempt to avoid talking and giving himself away.

Carla declined a chance at dessert, although Kelsey didn't look too happy about that. When the bill came Johnny grabbed it and took it up to the front, telling Carla that he had to get back so he'd pay it now and head out. Once again it would have been good to know just where back was supposed to be but, it still couldn't be helped. Thankfully Carla just nodded and told him they'd see him for dinner.

He'd have to give Murdock another call. If this farce of mistaken identity kept happening then he would probably need the lawyer to run interference, even if it meant the man had to fly down from New York to... A sudden light bulb went off in Johnny's head as he put together his problem of finding out anything about Stephen Lords from New York; with the fact that his lawyer worked in the same city and could probably find him the information he needed with a lot less hassle than him trying to do it from here.

Darn, but that lawyer bill was going to be nasty this month.

Lost in thought he didn't notice Kelsey beside him for a moment. "Bye Johnny, thanks for lunch, say 'Hi' to Grace for me okay?"

He smiled down at her. "Will do little lady," he said in his best John Wayne.

She rolled her eyes at him and turned to head back to her mom at the table.

"Hey, Kelsey?" Johnny said, stopping her."

"What?"

"Say 'Hi' to your dad for me okay?" He suspecting asking her to do this was a terrible idea but felt compelled to none the less. "Tell him he's a lucky guy and I hope to get to meet him some day."

"Okay." He gave her and Carla a little wave and finally made it out of the restaurant to safety, at least for the moment.

He looked around the street a little, suddenly suspecting that every second person was going to mistake him for someone else. Given that he'd had some fame as a motorcycle stunt jumper the reverse attention was rather startling. He wondered, just briefly, if Stanley, whoever he was, was getting mistaken for him on occasion.

He just hoped the poor man never ran into Captain Dolan, that wouldn't be pretty that was for certain.

Giving a shrug of his shoulders at the thought he pulled out his cell phone and running through his phone numbers he gave his lawyer a call to see what he could find out about a much more pressing problem named Steven Lords.

Author's note: For those of you who have seen the Ghost Rider movie, honest to goodness the Italian food line in the restaurant was actually an accident. I didn't even realize that I was echoing a scene in the movie until I reread and it was too amusing to take out, so I left it.


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: Not mine, although I'm very happy that they came to play with me. For full disclaimer please see Chapter 1.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter 9

_Any society that needs disclaimers has too many lawyers. __**Erik Pepke**_

Stanley sighed. It felt so good he pulled in another breath and did it again. He was contemplating a third times the charm when Waldo thunked him over the head with a sheaf of crime scene photos and requested his actual attention on the job.

"Waldo, why are we here? We're chemical weapon's specialists, not analysts or profilers."

"Stanley," Waldo replied, in a tone of voice that implied that this wasn't the first time he'd explained this, "even you know we have a better chance than most of finding out the what the source of the poison was, assuming of course it isn't portable. And even if it is, we're still more likely to notice where something like that has been."

"Alright, alright." He looked around at the dismal interior of the Broken Spoke Saloon, closed these past six months since the deaths. Given the crime scene photos he held in his hands the place had been improved immensely by the removal of the many bodies that had lain scattered throughout the old building.

He shivered at the very thought of it, not liking that whatever had caused those deaths was still unknown and feeling very much in need of a hazmat suit. He had a great deal of trouble believing that it was safe here just because someone higher up the chain said it was.

They'd already searched the place over, top to bottom and sideways but, just like the train depot, they'd found nothing. Or at least nothing that seemed likely to cause mass sulphur poisoning.

What little organic matter they had found (like the dried out stash of Marijuana packets taped to the underside of the bar that someone should have discovered the first time around) they'd tagged and bagged to take back to the field office, where they would be shipped out to a local lab.

Yup, just as he thought, nothing to find here. Thank goodness his partner had already gone over Johnny Blaze's place, he didn't thing he'd be able to stay awake through another fruitless search. On top of that it was getting to be time to meet up with his ladies for a nice relaxing dinner.

"Waldo, are you done over there?" He asked his partner, who was hanging over the top of the bar in an attempt to see under it better.

"Uh, yeah, probably." He said before flailing his legs around in an attempt to right himself. "Uh, a little help here, please."

Stanley grabbed his belt and used it to pull Waldo off of the bar and onto his feet. "What would you ever do without me?"

"Bite me."

"No thanks, Carla would kill me if I ate before dinner."

"Oh, ha very ha." Waldo gave the building one more glance, and then flicked his head towards the door. "Let's get out of here then, there's no way I want to make you late for dinner with your wife. Our medical just wouldn't cover that kind of an emergency."

"You've got that right."

--------000--------

Dinner that night was at a little restaurant near the hotel and consisted of a spinach quiche, a crisp salad, a side of asparagus and a selection of fruit for dessert. Tasty, but it lacked the joy of last night's steak. Stanley smiled over at his wife. Ah well, that's what you get when you marry a nutritionist that actually practices what she teaches.

Stanley threw another smile at his daughter, who was still looking a little grumpy over not being allowed to wear her new cowboy, oops, sorry, cowgirl hat at the table. Supper conversation had centred on the shopping trip to Sundance square and the many hats Kelsey had tried on until she found the one she now owned. That and a few subtle probes by his wife to try and find out how his day had been, probes he'd managed to deflect back to the shopping trip as he didn't think that crime scenes were good table conversation.

They took in a movie after dinner, some silly thing about a cop with a chimpanzee for a partner. A bit painful, but with Kelsey with them there hadn't been much else that was acceptable to take a ten year old to. She at least had loved the film, which was really all that mattered.

They walked back to their hotel. Stanley and Carla arm in arm, with Kelsey slightly ahead of them, because she kept bumping into them with the brim of her new hat. It was then that Stanley asked a fateful question.

"So, what did you two do this morning? I've heard all about the shopping trip, but how was the museum?"

Kelsey immediately launched into a description of the Cowgirl Museum and she was in the middle of explaining the giant IMAX film they'd seen and how it said that there were cowboys and cowgirls all over the world and not just in Texas, when Carla interrupted her.

"Honey, we already told your dad all of that."

"No we didn't/No you didn't." Kelsey and Stanley said at the same time.

"Come on, we told you all about the museum at lunch."

"Uh, Honey, we didn't have lunch together today."

"Staaaanley."

"No, honest, I think I would remember that, especially as anything would have been better than snagging a take out sandwich in the car with Waldo."

"Stanley, the three of us had lunch together, at an outdoor restaurant in Sundance Square."

Stanley was about to continue his side of the discussion when Kelsey spoke up.

"No we didn't, we had lunch with Johnny. Oh, Dad, I forgot, he said to say 'Hi', and that you're a lucky guy and he hopes to get to meet you some day." Kelsey told him, hoping she hadn't messed things up by forgetting to pass on that message until now.

Stanley practically dragged his family back the last block to the hotel and sat them down in the lobby to talk with them better.

"Ok, let's start this again, you saw me this afternoon."

"Yes, you walked right past us without even noticing, I had to call your name three times to get your attention. You were dressed all in black leather and you said you were, or at least you had, been doing something undercover

"Undercover, Honey I'm a biochemist, undercover isn't usually my thing."

"I know you've had to do it on occasion Stanley, you always get all weird when you have to pretend to be someone else, even if it's just for a few minutes."

"And I was weird this afternoon?"

"A bit."

"Okay, Kelsey, why did you know who he was and Mom didn't?"

Kelsey just shrugged. "He wasn't you. I mean, he did look like you, but he still wasn't you. Besides, I asked him who he was and he told me his name was Johnny." Her face brightened as she remembered something. "Oh yeah, can I go and visit his motorcycle sometime, I'd really like to meet her."

Stanley and Carla just stared at her for a moment, and then both of them spoke together.

"No!"

Kelsey's shoulders slumped slightly. "Then can I at least go horseback riding?"

Carla and Stanley both looked at each other and then Stanley answered with a maybe.

Kelsey obviously decided to take that as a maybe yes.

"Okay Stanley," Carla said, teeth just starting to work towards gritting. "You don't seem all that surprised that there is someone out there that looks like you, so what gives, and it had better be good."

Stanley sat down on one of the lobby chairs next to them. "Waldo ran into him the first day we got here. His name is Johnny Blaze, and he's pretty much the only suspect we have on the case we're working here, and I shouldn't even be telling you that much," he said, as he could see that Carla was about to wind herself up into a full blown rant. "You know I'm not supposed to talk about my cases Carla."

Carla pulled back on her rant. "Fine, but you still should have told us you have some sort of evil twin out there. Something a lot worse than lunch could have happened." A look of horror flashed across her face. "Kelsey, what happened while I was in the washroom, at lunch time?" She asked her, carefully.

"Johnny told me his name, and I told him mine and yours and Dad's. He told me he actually knew a real cowboy but he had passed on... I think that means he died. And then he told me about Grace and then you came back."

Carla blew out a quiet breath of relief.

"Kelsey?" Her dad asked her. "Who is Grace?"

"His motorcycle, I'd really like to meet her, he said maybe I could but, I think it was kind of a maybe, maybe rather than a maybe, yes." She looked up at her dad hopefully. "But, I'd still really like to meet her."

Stanley wondered why Kelsey was suddenly more interested in motorcycles than horses, as she'd often seemed to share Carla's unhappy opinion about the bike he kept to ride on the weekends, but shrugged it off as just the constantly changing interests of a ten year old girl.

"Okay, I don't think the guy is dangerous, or at least not to you, although I do wonder why he didn't just say who he was."

"That's because Mom scares him." Kelsey told them.

"What?"

"Well I asked, and he said that Mom scares him."

That, Stanley thought, was probably one of the first things that made sense all day, not that he was going to tell Carla that, as she was already looking somewhat insulted.

"Okay, so if you run into me again someplace where it's unlikely that I would be and I'm dressed differently, suspect that it isn't me, at least until we get back home to Washington."

Stanley paused a moment, but before he could start his next sentence Carla had headed him off.

"Forget it Stanley, we're here for the rest of the two weeks you were supposed to have off for vacation or until we all head back home, so just deal with it."

Stanley gave her a grim smile and a nod, already thinking of how he might make it so he'd be able to deal with it a little better.

Author's note: I don't know if they actually said what Carla did for a living in 'The Rock', but since this takes place over 10 years after that movie I've decided to make her a nutritionist. It just sort of happened, but it seems to fit in with all the food references.


	10. Chapter 10

Disclaimer: These characters, for the most part, are not mine. I'm just borrowing them for a time. For full disclaimer please see Chapter 1.

Author's note: I'm taking some liberties with a certain super villain's minions. Please see author's note at end of chapter for full details.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter 10

_A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself. _

_--__**Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance**_

Johnny was out driving Grace through and around Fort Worth well after darkness fell. So far they hadn't come across anything that they would need to deal with. Johnny instead used the time to worry at some information his lawyer had given him earlier in the evening.

Matt Murdock had told him that he'd started to make what should have been a few quiet inquires into Mr. Lords, and had come up with little through official channels. Through unofficial ones it was a little different. Murdock apparently had a reporter for an acquaintance, one who often knew more than he ought to and who acquired information and rumour like an enthusiastic hobbyist. If it was new, he wanted it and if he could get two or more variations, he wanted it even more.

The word he'd gotten back from that man was that Stephen Lords was a rich, well connected and probably sociopathic arms dealer. And not one who dealt hand guns or even things like AK-47s. Instead he dealt in tanks, missiles and possibly chemical weapons.

All in all not a surprising man for Blackheart to have had dealings with.

While none of this was good news, something else had happened that was even worse. Apparently Murdock hadn't managed to be quite as discrete as he'd hoped. Shortly after he and his partner had closed for the day, someone had broken into their office and searched his records. It was quite possible that Lords knew Johnny was after him and in turn he might come after Johnny.

Well, if that happened then at least he wouldn't have to go to New York himself.

--------000--------

This was a bad idea; it was perhaps even the Mother of all bad ideas.

Stanley opened the outer entrance to the freight elevator in Johnny's building, surprised that the man hadn't locked it down. He looked up at the loft's unlit windows, wondering if the guy was sitting there in the dark rather than out, despite the unanswered phone.

Didn't matter, either way he was going to talk to the man.

Originally he'd hoped to avoid him, as he wasn't really keen on meeting his double face to face. The fact that it could have been so easy for his family to have ended up dead or taken this afternoon, especially if this guy did have anything to do with the deaths they'd been investigating, made this meeting a necessity.

But it was still a really bad idea.

Technically, he was breaking into the guys place. He was there without invite, without a warrant and without back up.

Yup, really, really bad idea.

And he was still going to do it. This had nothing to do with the job, it was purely personal.

When the elevator reached Johnny's loft he slid the doors open, stepped out, hit the down button and then closed the doors so the lift would head back to the ground floor. Blaze would probably know something was up if it wasn't where he'd left it. Using a small penlight Stanley found the light switch near the elevator and flipped it on, wanting to get a quick lay of the land look at the place before he spent the rest of it in the dark, waiting for Blaze to show up.

"Ah, Mr Blaze, we have been expecting you."

Looks like someone else decided they liked sitting in the dark as well.

Stanley turned towards the voice and felt his mouth drop open. Standing in front of him were three, well, three ninjas.

Ninjas.

There were three Ninjas, standing in front of him.

Three... Ninjas.

Before he could repeat the thought again he mentally grabbed hold of himself and suggested to his suddenly overtaxed brain that he might want to deal with the situation first, and be stunned by it later.

"I'm afraid you have the wrong man, I'm not Johnny Blaze."

The middle ninja, the one that Stanley suspected had been the one to speak to him, merely drew his sword and pointed it at him.

"Honest," he said as he started to back up, "I'm not Johnny Blaze, I'm Stanley Goo.."

The sound of the elevator starting up grabbed both his and the three ninjas attention.

--------000--------

Johnny noticed the light on in his loft when he came back, but he couldn't actually remember if he'd turned all the lights out when he'd left or not, so he was only mildly worried about it.

He wheeled Grace into the elevator, closed the door and punched the up button. It had just started to move when the voice in the back of his mind that he was now as familiar with as his own spoke, warning him.

"_Evil."_

And reaching over to touch Grace, Johnny let the fire come.

--------000--------

The other two ninjas went for their swords and Stanley backed away from them, reaching for his gun as he did. The middle one continued towards Stanley as the other two took up guard positions in front of the elevator.

Stanley's attention was completely taken with the very sharp and shiny piece of metal that was getting closer and closer to him, when the elevator doors screeched apart like a soul in torment and the two guarding ninjas were thrown back by some kind of blast.

In the moment of distraction that the blast caused Stanley managed to finish pulling his gun, but completely forgot to use it as he stared in stunned awe at what was in the elevator.

There was a man on fire, so much so that he had been reduced to a mere skeleton without somehow burning his clothing away. Stanley couldn't even begin to guess how it managed to do that, or why it didn't just collapse into a pile of burning bone. The... whatever it was sat astride a, well Stanley wanted to call it a motorbike but, it was more like the flaming, demonised skeleton of a motorbike.

"**Guilty.**"

The impossibility in the elevator pointed to the stand alone ninja as he said that, although Stanley got the impression that he was talking about all three of them. He really hoped that he wasn't being included in the denouncement with them.

The three ninjas moved into what, to Stanley's beleaguered mind, appeared to be the first attack position for a light sabre duel.

The demon, ghost, biker, rider, demon rider, ghost biker, whatever it was gave the chain it was wearing wrapped across its chest and over its shoulder a pull, shrugging slightly as he did so. It came loose and he snapped the length of it tight between his two gloved hands, causing it to ignite.

Right, sure, of course it would.

The rider flipped the chain back, holding it with one hand, as if preparing to use the flaming chain like a whip.

For the count of two the only movement in the loft was the flame on the burning bikers head.

And then with a yell, the three ninjas threw themselves at the guy with the flaming skull.

And just as quickly they all fell down.

Stanley blinked, not sure he had really seen what he had seen. As soon as the ninjas had attacked the biker had whipped the chain at them. Three of the links at the end of this whip broke away and separated to hit each of the charging swordsmen in the upper chest.

Stanley wasn't sure, because it had happened so fast, but to him it had looked like the links had flattened out and somehow become sharper as they flew through the air to their targets. Although truth be told, it was more of an impression of what had happened, than something he had actually seen.

The rider stalked over to the three downed men and looked them over as if slightly confused by them before apparently making a choice, and grabbing the one who had first spoken with Stanley. As he held him the biker spoke in that voice, the one that even when he'd said only one word made Stanley want to pull his shoulders up around his ears and hide.

"**Your soul is stained with the blood of the innocent. Feel their pain.**"

Stanley hunched his shoulders up even tighter as the ninja began to scream. With his mind gibbering at a level of terror he hadn't felt since Alcatraz he suddenly remembered his gun.

He levelled it at the burning apparition, reacting to the fact that it was torturing a man, and because he was scared of it on a level he didn't even want to try to understand.

He hesitated, something he'd thought he'd learned not to do.

There was just enough doubt and common sense left for him to wonder if he should try to take down the thing that had stopped the three men, who most likely would have shish-kabobed him if it hadn't shown up, or if he should instead be helping him, it, whatever.

He hesitated too long or just long enough, it would depend on your point of view. The other two ninjas stopped playing dead and leapt to their feet, and in unison they thrust their swords into the biker's chest.

This appeared to annoy him.

The two ninjas screamed as their blades burst into flames and they let go fast. While the demon was busy pulling the rapidly melting skewers out of his body the two of them grabbed the third ninja, who was shaking and starting to babble. One of them threw something at one of the huge warehouse windows. It stuck there for a moment before it blew the window out in a cascade of shattered glass. Then all of them were out the window before Stanley could even blink.

If he hadn't been running on pure adrenalin Stanley probably wouldn't have done what he did next.

He ran to the window, moving right past the glowering demon. He held his gun at the ready in case the ninjas were somehow still there and ready to mount another attack.

Only darkness looked back at him and he let out a breath of relief. As he pulled in his next breath a smell, one that he had become increasingly familiar with searching for during the last couple of days came to his nose from behind him.

Sulphur.

Or in this case the older term of Brimstone would be the more accurate description for it.

Stanley slowly turned around and found himself eye to socket hole with a burning skeleton that could, from what he had seen, cause great pain just by looking into your eyes.

"Uh, hi?"

He wondered how a skull could snort without a nose.

"**Innocent.**" It said in that bone shaking voice of...his. Then it/he turned and headed back to his motorcycle.

--------000--------

Johnny/Ghost Rider was more surprised at just how much the man who had to be Stanley looked like him (when he had skin) than he was at being attacked by ninjas. After fighting Blackheart and the Hidden it would take more than guys in fancy pyjamas to faze him.

He turned away from the man who was in his loft uninvited, was carrying a gun and that the Rider could feel had taken a life, or perhaps even more than one life and yet in spite of all of these things, this man remained an innocent.

For Carla and Kelsey's sake he was glad but, it did leave him with a problem.

There was no way this man couldn't put two and two together and get Johnny Blaze as the Ghost Rider.

And then he had an epiphany.

He was just climbing on to the Hellcycle when he looked over at his double, who was looking at the gun in his hands like he ought to be doing something with it.

"**Blaze, you need to learn to stop getting into trouble**."

The man blinked owlishly at him for a moment before he reacted to Ghost Riders sentence with some heat.

"I AM NOT JOHNNY BLAZE."

He must be having just as much trouble with this mistaken identity thing as I/Blaze is the Rider thought.

"I'm Stanley Goodspeed."

A beat.

"**Of course you are**."

--------000--------

Stanley wondered why he was suddenly reminded of John Mason.

Skull man was reaching over to grab the two halves of the elevator door when Stanley moved forward, almost yelling out his question.

"Wait, who are you?"

Ghost Rider tilted his head in a gesture that would have mirrored somebody raising an eyebrow, if that somebody had skin, and muscles, and an eyebrow to do it with.

"**I'm Ghost Rider."**

And he slammed the door shut and hit the down button. Stanley just stood there awhile until the elevator reached the bottom before saying it.

"Well of course you are."

--------000--------

Stanley came crashing out the door to the stairs, just in time to see the rider disappear from view. Although given the flaming trial the bike left it might be possible to follow him...

Even as he thought that the fire died out, and then even the residue it left faded, almost like it was melting away.

Stanley decided right there and then that he'd had enough and he sat down quite suddenly on a curb. With an aggravated groan he cupped his head in his hands.

Ghost Riders and flaming motorcycles and ninjas. For crying out loud.

He knew it was never a good idea to ignore going by the book, but this...

This is what you get when you... The start of that thought reminded Stanley of something and he quieted his head, trying to let it bite again.

This is what you get... no, this is what happens... almost... this is the meeting?

Stanley sat bolt upright. 'This is the happy meeting between a flaming motorcycle and a skyscraper.' The briefing, the police and Dolan most definitely, they already knew about this guy, but they didn't warn them, not really.

Flaming skeleton on a motorcycle from hell... Okay, so none of them would have believed it, hell he didn't want to believe it and he... Wait, the briefing, back in Washington, they said something about a publicity stunt.

Yeah, what he saw was just...

Totally real.

Damn it, he really needed to learn how to lie to himself. It also looked like he was going to have to reassess some of the microfilm files he'd long ago consigned to the realm of fantasy, especially the Roswell one.

He dragged himself to his feet and started towards his car. He was going back to the hotel, he was going to have a long hot shower and go to bed. After much sleep, if sleep was possible, he was going to head to the Police Station and get a lot of answers.

He looked up at the now gaping hole in Blaze's windows and shook his head.

After all of this and he still hadn't gotten to talk with the man.

Just as well, he didn't think he could take a possibly evil twin on top of everything else at the moment.

Author's note: Yes, I know Deathwatch's ninjas are not human, but I had sort of forgotten that fact when I first wrote the scene and I really wanted Ghost Rider to penance stare one of them in front of Stanley. So I have decided that at this time Deathwatch is augmenting his forces outside of New York with 'normal' humans, hence GR's confusion when he was looking over the three ninjas, as two of them probably weren't human.

Hope this doesn't annoy anyone too much.


	11. Chapter 11

Disclaimer: Please see Chapter 1 for full disclaimer, because they're still not mine.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter 11

_Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives_**. William Dement**

Stanley looked like crap the next morning and knew it. Sleep had been an adventure and a half, mostly a revisiting of the night before with a few trips to Alcatraz in-between. Thankfully his dreams hadn't tried to mix the two into one story, or he'd look and feel even worse.

At least no one, not even Carla had seen him this morning. She and Kelsey had headed out early to go horseback riding at a near by ranch and had said goodbye through the bathroom door while he was still getting ready. During a quick breakfast (otherwise known as a bagel and a coffee on the way out the door) he'd managed to phone into the office and had gotten permission to liaison with the Fort Worth police for the day. Thornton was more than happy to send him off someplace that he expected to be both boring and safe.

Stanley called ahead, getting a meeting with a reluctant Captain Dolan for ten o'clock. At the same time he arranged to have the case files available for him to look over while he waited.

Dolan and case files about strange deaths and supernatural bikers. He could only wish for boring and safe. Sadly with his luck, he knew he was unlikely to get it.

--------000--------

Stephen Lords sipped at a glass of Champaign as he looked out the window of his private jet. Below the city of Fort Worth appeared to revolve, as if on a turntable as they circled the city yet again. Although his expression was placid as he gazed down he was actually highly annoyed. He hadn't wanted to leave New York at this time, especially when things were in such a delicate state, but he'd had little choice.

The report from the team he'd sent to investigate Johnny Blaze, a man who was suddenly looking into things that shouldn't concern him was, disheartening. It was bad enough that the two ninjas he'd sent to the lawyer's place of business in New York had barely made it out with the information he'd required, (he'd really have to consider doing something about Hell's Kitchens guardian angel, the self styled Daredevil at some point. He didn't like it when costumed heroes put their noses in his business) but now the three men he'd assigned to look into Blaze were reporting a battle with a demon, something that Lords, or rather Deathwatch knew a fair bit about, however the creature they described didn't ring any bells with him at the moment.

One of his people came to take his now empty glass and quietly informed him that they would be landing shortly. They didn't wait for their employer to acknowledge what they had said and Lords didn't bother to waste either breath or body movement to do so. He settled back in his seat as they started to descend, looking forward to an enjoyable morning of interrogating minions.

Well, enjoyable for him.

--------000--------

Stanley scoured the files looking for anything that might connect to last night, but found bupkis, or near enough. A few of the files did talk about the downtown damage and some weird publicity stunt that caused even more damage after that, but there were no descriptions, no eyewitnesses, nothing.

It just wasn't possible.

Captain Dolan had better have a few good answers for that, because it really looked like the man was suppressing evidence.

And speak of the devil, there was the man himself. "Okay, lets do this fast." He didn't bother to sit down.

Stanley looked up him. "You might want to sit Captain, it won't be that fast."

"Look, Blaze..."

"Goodspeed!"

Dolan blinked, startled at the sheer weight of pissed offedness the agent conveyed in his own name.

"Sit."

He sat.

Stanley took a couple of deep breaths. "Yesterday afternoon, Johnny Blaze was mistaken for me by my wife..." Dolan started slightly, surprised that the agent had apparently brought his wife along on a case.

Goodspeed took another calming breath. "Nothing happened, but as you can imagine this made me very uncomfortable. So much so that I decided to visit Mr. Blaze, to discuss the event with him."

"Okay," Dolan said, interested enough in what might have happened at that meeting to encourage Goodspeed to continue.

"During the briefing you had photos of a building wrecked by a motorcycle stunt. However, I can find almost nothing about what happened that night. Why isn't the information available?"

Dolan blinked at the change of subject, and then looked away from him. "Because almost everyone wants to pretend it didn't happen, or at least that it didn't happen the way they saw it happen." He shook his head at the mess. "Why do you want to know about that and what does that have to do with you going to rip Blaze a new one?"

"Last night three..." Not stupid he decided to switch out ninjas for a more generic description. "Three guys jumped me, believing I was Blaze. The only reason I'm not currently a guest of some hospital, or worse is that some...thing on a flaming motorcycle calling itself Ghost Rider stopped them."

Dolan jumped to his feet, a shocked and at the same time delighted look on his face. "I knew it; I knew he wouldn't get rid of that motorcycle. Damn it, when I find that thing I'm going to nail Blaze's ass to a wall and not even his fancy lawyer will be able to pry him loose this time."

"You think it's Blaze?"

"Yeah, don't you?"

Stanley mulled the thought over for a moment. "You know, I would have, but he, it, whatever, he went and mistook me for Blaze too." He thought it over a little further. "Of course he may have just been using the situation to muddy the waters a bit and make me believe that he, I mean Blaze wasn't involved."

"But you're not sure."

Stanley shook his head and Dolan shifted his gaze up to the ceiling as he thought things through. "Come on, I'll show you what didn't make it into the official files.

--------000--------

Deathwatch pulled his fingers from the wildly keening ninja and let him fall to the floor in a quivering pile. Apparently the pain that almost everyone felt caused by his telepathic invasion was still strong enough to override what was happening in the man's mind, albeit only for a short while.

The other two ninjas in the team had gone through a similar interrogation and he had allowed them to leave after, to recuperate from the experience.

Deathwatch left this man where he lay and moved over to his desk, sitting in the plush chair behind it.

Things... were getting very interesting.

The one reason he was letting the other two members of the team live was that even he thought that being prepared to take down a demon, or whatever that thing was, when all you were doing was a bit of information retrieval and...well information silencing was asking a bit much, even for him.

The fact that they had engaged the creature and then made a successful escape when it became apparent they were not equipped to deal with it showed that their training continued in its usual excellence. It was also further proof that augmenting his troops with 'normal' humans wasn't hurting their performance.

Unfortunately the third man, who had been the group's leader and one of those humans, was a complete loss. His mind was trapped in a loop of every terrible thing he had ever done. Each death at his hands was now running over and over again in his mind, only now he was the victim, continually being hurt and killed by himself.

He should however, prove to be a delicious meal.

--------000--------

Stanley watched the chase footage taken from a squad car's video camera with an analytical eye. Darn, that bike was fast and despite its hulking presence it was more manoeuvrable than it should have been, hell than any bike should have been. Still, it looked like they'd boxed the Rider into a dead end, so why hadn't they been able to take him into custody?"

Then Stanley's mouth dropped open and he forgot to breathe for a few seconds.

He looked over at Dolan, who had paused the picture while Dr. Goodspeed's mind caught up.

"That can't be possible." No bike could actually drive up a building, not without some kind of elaborate pulley system at least, and not with the ease that Ghost Rider had just pulled off.

"You haven't seen anything yet. Next up is some of the footage shot by a police helicopter."

And the action shifted to the roof of the building. Stanley gaped in further shock as Ghost Rider used that ridiculously impossible chain of his to snag a helicopter and actually pulled it in towards himself, apparently using nothing but body strength to do so.

"And this is him coming back down the building," Dolan said, rather unnecessarily.

More breaking glass and Stanley could see why so much of the concrete was broken in the picture he'd seen before as Ghost Rider landed in front of the building with the power of a small bomb. Chunks of concrete were blown through the air and the area was cloaked by a cloud of dust as some of the cement was powdered by the force of his arrival.

The dust cleared and Ghost Rider sat on his bike, both of them unscathed. Then he got off and started to walk towards something off camera. Stanley got the impression that it was an actual someone that had gotten the Rider's attention. In the background he heard an order to fire, the voice sounding like Dolan's. Another voice, higher pitched and probably female yelled no, but the assembled police officers ignored it and bullets flew.

Ghost Rider obviously took the hits, but they didn't do anything and Stanley remembered the swords that the two ninjas had stabbed him with. The things had caught fire and started to melt almost immediately. Maybe something similar happened to the bullets?

The Rider suddenly gestured and a curtain of flame sprang up between him and the police. Then he was back on his bike, through the blockade, and gone.

Dolan turned of the television and looked over at Stanley. "Well?"

"Okay, I definitely see why none of that is in the official report."

"Thought so."

Stanley opened his mouth to speak, but paused a moment to arrange his scattered thoughts. Once they had more or less fallen into place he continued. "Just after he landed and got off his bike, it looked like he was walking towards someone in particular."

Dolan nodded. "Roxanne Simpson. A reporter, a good one. A pain in the ass, but still a good one." Dolan looked him in the eye. "She's also Johnny Blaze's girlfriend."


	12. Chapter 12

Disclaimer: You know the drill, they're not mine. Please see Chapter 1 for full disclaimer.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter 12

_Justice may be blind, but she has very sophisticated listening devices. __**Edgar Argo**_

Roxanne Simpson was having a mild argument with her camera man as they sat in the editing booth, trying to pull the piece they'd shot that morning into something both coherent and newsworthy.

"Stuart, no one wants to look at twenty-five seconds of mangled Twinkies and shot up cereal boxes with no voice over," Roxanne said as they ran the footage from a grocery store hold up early this morning.

"Yeah, but don't you think that this," and here he stopped the footage and circled a spot on the screen that was a particularly messy bit of ventilated groceries, "looks like Elvis."

"No."

"But..."

"No!"

"Ah, come on it'll be a good hook."

She glared at him.

"Or not," he said, backing away from the discussion.

"Cut it down to five seconds." She glanced back at the screen. "You can keep Elvis, but we're not mentioning it. If someone else wants to see it there then they will have to do it without hints from us."

Right then one of the production assistants poked her head in and told Roxanne that she had a phone call on line one and she left Stuart to finish pulling the piece together.

She took one look back at the screen on her way out and shook her head.

It really did look like Elvis.

--------000--------

"Hello, Roxanne Simpson speaking."

"Ah, Ms. Simpson, this is Dr. Stanley Goodspeed speaking, I'm a Chemical Weapons specialist with the FBI and..."

"Johnny, what the hell are you up to?" She asked, completely perplexed. Johnny's life was strange enough, why would he be pretending to be an FBI agent?

"Oh heck, just a moment." She heard the phone being fumbled to someone else and another familiar voice came over the line.

"Ms. Simpson, this is Captain Dolan, of the Fort-Worth police department."

"Captain Dolan, how can I help you and why is Johnny there?"

"Actually Ms. Simpson that was not Mr. Blaze. He really is an agent with the FBI."

"But..."

"Yes he does sound like Blaze." The police captain paused a moment. "He even bares a passing resemblance to your friend."

"Okay, so why is he calling?"

"I'll let him talk to you about that."

Another fumbled passing of the phone.

"Ms. Simpson, you were in Fort Worth six months ago, during the Broken Spoke Saloon deaths and the Ghost Rider incident, yes?" Dr. Goodspeed asked, sounding even more like Johnny, okay an officious Johnny. Of course, now that she listened a little more carefully his accent was slightly different than Johnny's. Not that you could pin down Johnny's exactly, as it had always been a mix of Texas and every other place that he and his father had toured their bike show.

"Yes." She answered, wondering if they were still trying to pin the sulphur deaths on Johnny. Not that he hadn't been involved with the deaths, but it had been with hunting down and stopping the killers, not with causing the deaths in the first place.

That would probably make him a vigilante in the eyes of the law, but she doubted very much that anyone else could have stopped Blackheart, a man who was apparently the Son of the Devil.

"During the Ghost Rider incident it appeared that the rider knew you and was even approaching you in some of the footage that was shot that night. Were you able to recognize him?"

Roxanne laughed lightly. "Ghost Rider could have been my own father and I wouldn't have known it was him. However that costume was pulled off, it was more than effective."

"Costume, so you don't believe it was real."

"Real, right. Maybe you should be talking to my camera man instead; he just found the likeness of Elvis in a pile of shot up dry goods."

"Of course. Thank you for your time Ms. Simpson."

"You're welcome."

"Oh, one more thing, would you know why anyone would want to attack Mr. Blaze?"

"Attack?"

"Yes, last night three people were lying in wait for Mr. Blaze."

"Is he alright," she asked, her voice becoming panicked.

"Yes, they were chased off before they were able to do anything, but I was wondering if he'd talked to you about any problems he's been having."

Roxanne thought for a moment. Except for the Ghost Rider stuff, which she wasn't going to talk about, she couldn't think of anything that Johnny would be involved in that would cause that type of attack.

"I haven't talked to Johnny for a couple of weeks Dr. Goodspeed." He had called her from a motel he was staying at, just to hear her voice and tell her that he was thinking of heading back to Fort Worth for a time. She'd told him that she thought it was a good idea and she hoped once he had enough of his own town that he would head down to Atlanta so they could see each other again, if just for a little while.

"Ah, well, once again thank you for your time."

"You're welcome again Dr. Goodspeed," she said, "Goodbye."

"Goodbye Ms. Simpson."

She hung up and bit her lip in thought for a few moments before picking up the phone and calling an old friend.

"Hello, Johnny?"

--------000--------

Johnny hung up the phone and sat back to brood a bit. It was always a treat to talk to Roxanne, especially after all those years they had spent apart, however he wasn't comfortable with the fact that the things that were happening here were reaching out to touch her.

Not that he would ever be happy about the danger that just knowing him could put her in.

He shook his head and reminded himself that that was enough introspection.

So Stanley Goodspeed was a chemical weapons specialist as well as an FBI agent. He supposed that made sense as they were looking at a series of deaths caused by poison and introduced into each of its victims in an unknown manner.

And apparently he had been talking to Captain Dolan... He breathed out a laugh, so he had ended up running into the good captain. That probably hadn't been pretty. And now with the captain's help he was looking into Ghost Rider.

Well, he would too if he'd just been saved from certain death at the hands of three ninjas by a flaming skeleton on a motorcycle.

Johnny's life was strange enough that that almost seemed normal, or at least par for the course. He suspected that Stanley Goodspeed would disagree though.

He picked up the phone again to call a glass shop, as staring reflectively at the plywood covering his broken window was a poor way to brood.

As it turned out they wouldn't be able to replace it for another three days, but someone would be over that day to take measurements and give him an estimate for the repair. He thanked them and hung up, sitting back to brood some more.

And it wasn't until then that it occurred to him to wonder about who the ninjas were working for in the first place.

--------000--------

"Sir?"

Stephen Lords looked up at his personal aide.

"Yes?"

The man placed a file on his desk.

"The five man team that you sent to take care of your Hell's Kitchen problem are currently unconscious and in the hospital under police custody."

Lords flipped open the file and sifted through the few sheets of paper within it.

"It appears that Daredevil is a harder nut to crack than I first thought he would be."

His aide said nothing, merely awaited instruction.

"However it's a nut I currently don't have the time to eat. I'll see about dealing with him later. Give the men in the hospital another five hours to suicide. If they haven't by that deadline then send in a cleanup team to take care of them."

His aide nodded. "Certainly sir, will there be anything else?"

"Have the men I asked about been found? "

"Not yet sir, but I am expecting a report on that search in the next hour. "

"Good." Lords paused in thought and his aide knew better then to disturb him, just as he knew he hadn't been dismissed yet.

"See if you can locate Blackout for me, I may need his services in the near future."

"Of course sir." His aide nodded again before turning and leaving the office.

Yes, Lords thought, Blackout could be of some use, but where to place him?

--------000--------

"So why call her?" Dolan asked as Stanley hung up. "It didn't sound like she told you anything new."

"No, I just wanted to get a feel for her." Stanley mused on the conversation for a moment. While he wasn't all that great at reading people, living with his two ladies for the last ten years had given him some insight into the thought processes of women, even if it was just to realize when to back off or stay out of something.

"She was lying, about not knowing who Ghost Rider was."

"You think?" Captain Dolan asked with no little sarcasm.

Stanley ignored it. "She wasn't lying about not knowing why someone is after Blaze now." A frown crossed his face. "She wasn't lying about the Elvis thing either."

"Elvis?"

Stanley just waved off the question, implying that it was nothing.

She'd also, he thought, been lying when she said that Ghost Rider was a costume. She believes that he's real.

Just like he did.

Captain Dolan decided to let the Elvis thing go, not really wanting to know, he was sure it would just give him a headache. However, all this talking on the phone knocked loose a thought he hadn't considered earlier.

"Hey, have your people done any phone taps on Blaze?"

"I think that it was in the plans, but his lawyer moved to block it as soon as he realized we were looking at Blaze."

Dolan shook his head at that. "I knew that guy was annoying the last time I had to deal with him."

"Yeah, well I don't think he was able to hold them up for very long, the permit for the taps was supposed to be out today." He looked at his watch. "An hour ago in fact." He looked at Dolan, whose face held an expression like that of a kid, who'd just been given an all you can eat pass to a candy store.

"What do you want to bet she called him just as soon as you hung up?"


	13. Chapter 13

Disclaimer: Not mine, see Chapter 1 for full details.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter 13

_Reach out and touch someone._

_-- __**AT&T**_

"Johnny?"

"Roxanne, how are you?"

"I'm fine... I miss you."

"I miss you too."

Stanley winced as he listened to the two obviously in love people, feeling a bit like an audio voyeur. He wondered why the two of them weren't together. It couldn't be their jobs. Blaze hadn't appeared to be working for the last six months, or at least not as a bike rider. They had found a work record for him from three months ago where he'd worked for a couple of weeks as a bartender. Apparently the guy he replaced was laid up in the hospital at the time, after having been badly beaten during a robbery attempt.

Wondering briefly if they'd ever caught the guys who'd done it, Stanley turned his attention back to the recording.

"Johnny I got a call from an FBI agent today."

"Darn, I'm sorry honey."

"Don't be sorry, it's not your fault."

"Feels like it is."

Stanley felt like pulling his hair out as he listened to the back and forward of their conversation. Why didn't they say something useful already?

"Johnny, why is the FBI looking at you, and why would the agent who called be a chemical weapon's expert?"

"I think they're still trying to figure out what Blackheart did."

Blackheart? Who the hell was Blackheart? Was it a code name, as street name, what?

"Damn, and that's not something you'll ever be able to explain."

"No, it isn't."

Arrrrggggggg.

"Johnny, who tried to attack you?"

Yes, who was that anyway?"

"Uh, no one."

"Johnny."

Dear God, he hoped Blaze knew not to mess with a woman who was talking through gritted teeth.

"Okay, okay," a breath, "I don't know who they were, and they didn't actually attack me, because they mistook someone else for me."

There was a few moments of silence.

"Would that someone have been Agent Goodspeed?"

"How did you know about him?"

"He was the agent who called me. He said that there were three of them."

"Yeah, only Ghost Rider was there to stop them."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

Say something. Is Blaze Ghost Rider, how does he do it, something, anything.

"That must be why he's talking with Captain Dolan and looking at the old news footage from that night."

"He's been busy."

"Yeah. Johnny maybe you should get out of town. You could always come and visit me, you know."

"Man I would love to do that Roxy, but I have to see things out here."

There was another moment of silence and Stanley could almost hear the wheels turning in Ms. Simpson's head.

"Johnny, what are you not telling me?"

A sigh.

"I can't be certain, but I think that Blackheart left something behind. Something that could come back to bite everyone on the butt, and by everyone I mean everyone on the planet."

Zeus's Butt hole!

"Well... Hell." That from Ms. Simpson, who sounded like she really wanted to say something much worse, but couldn't come up with anything that would fully express the situation.

"Yeah."

"How'd you find out about this?"

Another pause, one that seemed to carry a feeling of dread.

"Well the dev... uh, Meph... uh crap, Blackheart's father told me."

"WHAT?"

Stanley jerked his head away from the recording as Roxanne Simpson's voice hit shriek levels. Now he not only had to find out who Blackheart was, but he also had to find the guy's father.

He was beginning to feel like he was in some kind of terrorist soap opera.

"You CAN'T trust that, that... that...person Johnny, you know you can't."

"Yeah Roxy I know, I know better than most."

Well whoever this guy was, he'd done a number on Blaze in the past. They would probably need to go over all of Blaze's business records, again.

Ms. Simpson took a few deep breaths.

"I'm sorry Johnny, it's just... I don't want to lose you, not after I've found you again."

"Believe me, I know the feeling."

"Promise me you'll be careful."

"Roxy."

"As careful as you can be, alright?"

Silence.

"Johnny please." Stanley couldn't remember the last time he'd heard anyone as desperate as Roxanne Simpson was at this moment.

"I'll be careful Roxy, or at least as careful as I can be. After all, I still need to come visit you in Atlanta and I have no intention of missing the chance to do that."

"I'm holding you to that Johnny. I love you."

"I love you too Roxy. Be careful yourself, okay?"

"Okay. Stay safe Johnny."

"I will."

And then they both hung up.

Stanley sat back and blew out a breath he'd been holding in for the last few seconds.

While there wasn't as much information as he'd hoped for, it did give them some new avenues to look down.

"Agent Goodspeed."

Stanley jerked around, surprised to see Agent Thornton behind him.

"Just what did he mean that three men attacked you after mistaking you for him and why haven't I gotten a report on the incident?

Oh, darn!


	14. Chapter 14

Disclaimer: Not mine, see Chapter 1 for full details.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter 14

_If you read a lot of books, you're considered well-read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you're not considered well-viewed. _

_-- __**Lily Tomlin**_

Johnny buzzed the person at his door into his elevator, expecting it to be the window guy. Yes he was keeping the elevator locked now, although he didn't think that a little thing like a lock would stop a ninja. Still, there was no reason to make it easier for them.

Of course maybe he should also be using his intercom system, as the guy in the elevator was not the glass repair man.

"Johnny Blaze?" The man held his hand out as he said his name, Johnny didn't take it.

"Yes."

The guy took his hand back, not even appearing to be insulted.

"My name's Marlin Brock and I'm here to offer you the chance of a lifetime."

Johnny just looked at him, thinking that the guy could out sleaze most of the promoters he'd know, even the ones that worked the small carnies.

"Maybe we could sit down?" The guy asked.

Johnny didn't move.

"Anyway, I have to tell you Mr. Blaze, you're a hard man to get hold of. We've tried phoning you, mailing you, talking to your former crew, everything."

Ah, that probably explained all the mail that he tossed out mostly unopened from some production company. Even before everything in his life went nuts he wouldn't have had time to take a job as a consultant on a film.

"I'm sorry Mr. Brock, but I don't have the time, or the inclination to consult on any long term projects at this time."

"Now, now, just hear me out. I know you've been taking a break ever since you made that three hundred foot jump, but eventually you'll want to get back in the game and this will be a great way to ease into it." As he said this he awkwardly opened his briefcase and pulled out what looked like a script.

"Besides how could you possibly turn down the chance to work on the movie version of the Stunt-Master TV show?"

Johnny had opened his mouth to turn the job down without even thinking about it, but Brock's last statement stopped him cold.

"Stunt-Master?"

"Yup, we're in preproduction and will start filming in New York in just three weeks."

What was it with him and New York lately?

He eyed the man and the script he held. If it had been any other show he would be kicking the guy out right about now, but Stunt-Master... He and his dad had never missed the show if they could, even going so far as to arrange their show times around the TV show.

Johnny held fond memories for the show. Hell as a kid he'd practically worshipped the thing. While he suspected the acting and plot might not be as stellar as he thought of it at the time, the motorcycle stunts had never been less than awesome.

"When do you need to know?"

Brock smiled like it was a done deal and handed over the script. He indicated the card that was stapled to the first page. "If you could let us know by the end of the week, then that should be enough time to set everything up." He opened the briefcase again and pulled out another shelf of papers, handing them over to Johnny. "Here's what we'd be expecting during the shoot and when you're ready just have your agent... Do you have an agent?"

"No, but my lawyer will take care of any contracts."

"Okay, so once you're ready to deal, just have your lawyer call us and we'll set up a day for negotiations."

Johnny looked at the script. "Okay, I'll look it over, but... I can't really promise anything, so don't get your hopes up."

"Not to worry Mr. Blaze, I'm sure we'll have an excellent working experience together."

Well the guy was enthusiastic; you had to give him that.

He looked around Johnny's loft, almost like he was considering it for a set.

"Say, what happened to the window?" He asked, indicating the plywood boarded over spot.

Johnny answered without even thinking about it.

"Ninjas."

The guy looked at the window again, as if calculating something.

"Nah, it'll never work, too nineties.

--------000--------

Stanley sat in the briefing room, hunched over a laptop as he typed up a report about last night. Agent Thornton had already torn a strip out of him for that and Stanley knew he'd be lucky if he didn't end up with an official reprimand in his file, if not worse.

Well his old partner, Marvin Isherwood was always trying to convince him to come join him over at Orkin. Designing the next generation of roach motels would probably be safer too.

Stanley looked up as he noticed the first few members of the task force start to filter into the room before turning his attention back to his report. A report that was in its self as sterile as he could make it. Events were recorded as he had seen them occur, without any of the emotional quantifiers. Also large amounts of bull was utilized as he described everything unusual, from ninjas to the Ghost Rider, in the terms of costumes, props and special effects.

He was just finishing up when Agent Thornton asked for everyone's attention and he looked up to see the room was now filled with agents.

"At 10:56 am this morning the phone taps we had activated at Johnny Blazes loft recorded this conversation between Mr. Blaze and his girlfriend, one Roxanne Simpson, A.K.A Roxy, who is a cable news reporter based in Atlanta."

Thornton hit the button on a recorder that had been set up in the room and played the same conversation that Stanley had listened to earlier. Once it was done Thornton took over the meeting again. "As you could hear on the recording Mr. Blaze and apparently Ms. Simpson may both know who is responsible for the sulphur deaths six months ago. We don't know who this Blackheart is, but apparently Mr. Blaze has had recent contact with a member of that person's family."

"It appears that neither Ms. Simpson nor Mr. Blaze trust either of our two, as of yet unidentified suspects and we should be able to use this in the future to play the four of them off of one another, once we have them in custody. We will not at this time be bringing Mr. Blaze or Ms. Simpson in for questioning, as we do not want to tip our hand before they can lead us to the other suspects."

"We will however be running around the clock surveillance on both of them. The Atlanta office will provide two teams of two for Ms. Simpson. We will have four teams of two on Mr. Blaze with two teams on him during each shift, as it appears that Mr. Blaze is more likely to make contact with the other suspects. At some point they may have to split up to follow both Mr. Blaze and one of the other perps."

Thornton paced around the table a bit until he reached Stanley. He looked down at him and then paced back to the head of the table.

"There is another possibility that this Blackheart and or his father is now attempting to dispose of Mr. Blaze. Either that or a third as yet unknown party has entered the picture." Thornton glanced back towards Stanley. "Dr. Goodspeed."

Thornton took his seat as Stanley stood up. He cleared his throat and as dryly as possible gave a run down of what had happened the night before, as well as what he had learned from Captain Dolan that morning.

Even dry there was a lot of disbelieving murmurs during Stanley's recitation and Thornton threw more than one quieting glance around the room.

When Stanley was done Thornton was on his feet before anyone could even start to throw questions. "The second call we intercepted at Mr. Blazes loft this morning was to a glass repair shop to get an estimate to replace one of his windows. Also the materials that Dr. Goodspeed saw this morning with Captain Dolan are being couriered over and will be available for viewing shortly. Once everyone has seen them we will be running a profiling session, so please, everyone, wait until you've seen the film."

Stanley kept his head down as he pecked out the last few sentences to his report. Once he'd saved it to a memory stick he packed everything up to go find a computer with a printer so he could present Thornton with a completed report.

--------000--------

Johnny looked over the script while he waited for the glass guy to show up. The plot was, eh, okay; better at least then some of the TV ones, especially towards the end of the programs run. The dialog was at least not cringe worthy and the stunts...

The stunts worried him, the descriptions of most sounding like near certain death for any stunt man that attempted them. He suspected, hoped in fact that some of them would be some combination between real stunt and computer graphics. As much as he appreciated doing it for real, when it was just for make believe than there wasn't any reason to not use make believe.

With these thoughts in mind he placed a call to his lawyer, leaving a message for him to get back to him.

He was just picking the script up again as someone buzzed to be let in. This time he actually did talk to the guy to make sure he was there about the window before unlocking the elevator. Once the guy made it up to the loft he gave him a hand pulling down the plywood and left him to look the problem over.

Johnny made himself a roast beef sandwich, grabbed one of the bottles of root beer out of the fridge and sat down with the script again. The sandwich and half the root beer was gone when the guy presented his quote to Johnny, telling him he could do the glass, but he wouldn't be able to recreate the stained glass part that all of the other windows had.

Johnny nodded, having expected that and looked at the price. He cringed slightly at the total and wondered if maybe he had better take the movie job after all, as at the rate he was going his savings would only last another three or four years. The guy offered to help get the plywood back in place and the two of them manhandled the thing until it once again covered the window. Johnny nail gunned a few finishing nails into it to hold it and then thanked the man for his assistance.

"No problem. So, three days from now, probably around 1:00 pm, if that's alright with you."

"That would be great, thanks." Or at least Johnny hoped it would be alright. "If something should come up would it be alright if I left the elevator unlocked for your guys with a cheque to cover on the kitchen counter?"

"Yeah, that would probably be okay, if you're alright with us being in here without you. You know if it's a problem, we could arrange another day."

"No, no, it's just that I've had a few unexpected," Johnny searched for the right word, but as there really wasn't one, gave up, "things come up. I'm not a hundred per cent sure that another one won't come up at the last moment."

"Well, sure in that case it shouldn't be a problem."

Johnny nodded his thanks and showed the guy out. Alone again, except for Grace, he flipped through a few more pages of the script before deciding to head out and hit the streets.

Maybe he didn't know were to find the ninjas, even though he suspected that Steven Lords was the man behind them. Still, he wasn't likely to find them just sitting here, unless of course they invaded his space again. He looked at the window estimate and decided it would be better to go out, there being less chance of even more of his place being wrecked if a confrontation happened somewhere else.

Of course that probably didn't bode well for any other place in Fort Worth.

While Johnny pushed Grace towards the lift he realized that while Lords might not even be in town, he could go look over some of the businesses the man owned here. Murdock's very useful reporter friend had sent along a list of places that he might be using as fronts for his arms dealings.

Maybe he'd get lucky.

Johnny took Grace down in the lift and locked the elevator down to his floor before pushing her out to the street and starting her up. He felt a twitch between his shoulder blades, as if someone were watching him. A quick look found nothing, so he shrugged it off and headed out. A few blocks later and driving in a way that was completely normal for him, he had successfully evaded the two FBI teams assigned to follow him.

And he'd never even realized they were there.

Author's note: In the comics, Stunt-Master was actually a TV series that Johnny Blaze worked as a stunt man on. I just had to add it in here.


	15. Chapter 15

Disclaimer: They're not mine I tell you, I have no idea how they got here. For full disclaimer, please see Chapter 1.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter 15

_Riding: The art of keeping a horse between you and the ground. _

_-- __**Author Unknown**_

Carla was walking, with only a slight hobble as Kelsey bounced along at her side. They had spent the morning horse back riding and after a late lunch, were now taking a rambling walk through the Fort Worth Historical Stockyards District. For Carla the area was impressive, with lots of shopping and entertainment prospects that Kelsey was willing to put up with, as long as she got to see the daily cattle drive that was supposed to happen later that afternoon.

Carla had her attention fully taken by a window display of beaded western skirts when the revving of a motorcycle engine caught her attention. She looked over to see her daughter talking animatedly with a man who looked like her husband, but wasn't.

--------000--------

Kelsey was bored. Bored, bored, bored and the only reason she wasn't going to whine about it was because she really wanted to see the cattle drive. She hoped there would be cowboys on horses going get along little doggies, even if she'd never quite understood why they would call a cow a doggie. Anyway she hoped that that's what they'd be doing, and she really wished hours could be minutes so it would be four o'clock already.

A motorcycle purred up along the street and pulled over to stop beside her while she was waiting for her mom to stop looking in the latest window.

"Hi Kelsey."

Kelsey turned around, almost expecting to see her dad, but saw it was Johnny instead. She walked over to talk with him, so she wouldn't have to yell.

"Hi Johnny." She looked at the bike he was on and her face lit up. "Is that Grace?"

"It is, Grace, this is Kelsey, Stanley's daughter, and the girl I told you sent her greetings earlier. Kelsey, this is Grace.

"Hi Grace." Grace's front wheel and handles bars tuned towards her with out any help from Johnny, as his hands were resting on his legs. The well named Harley gave a rev of greeting to the young girl.

This caught her mom's attention and Carla came over, her expression a mix of shock, horror and supremely pissed off.

"Uh, Mrs. Goodspeed, how are you today?" Johnny asked, resisting the urge to lean out of the woman's way. Give him ninjas any day; they were a lot less scary.

"Mr. Blaze, it is Mr. Blaze isn't it?"

"Uh, yes, I'm sorry about," Johnny gestured for a moment, obviously stuck for a way to explain, "Uh...yesterday." He finished up, somewhat lamely.

Carla didn't seem to be particularly placated. "My daughter tells me that I scare you."

"Uh, well... yeah." Johnny said, his face full of embarrassed honesty.

Carla nodded. "Good." She looked at her daughter. "Kelsey?"

"Awww, I want to stay and talk with Grace."

"Grace?"

Kelsey grabbed her mom's hand and pulled her slightly towards Johnny's bike.

"Mom this is Grace," she said indicating the Harley. "Grace this is Mom, who's sometimes called Carla."

For a moment Carla thought she saw the headlight wink at her and she wondered how Blaze had pulled that off without touching the controls. Still, she was a Mom and knew when to play along. "Hello Grace, it's nice to meet you. Kelsey we need to get going if we're going to see the cattle drive later."

Kelsey nodded with enthusiasm.

"Mr. Blaze?"

"Uh, yes Ma'am?"

"If you should by chance run into us again and don't let us know who you are, then I will make sure I know the difference between you and my husband by making you sing soprano, are we clear?"

"Very clear Ma'am, enjoy the cattle drive."

"Bye Johnny, bye Grace," Kelsey said waving as her mom walked away, taking her with her. Johnny waved back at them before shifting uncomfortably on his seat. He had the distinct feeling that Grace was laughing at him, but all in all, that had gone better than he'd expected it to.

--------000--------

Stanley dropped his completed report on Thornton's desk and the agent stopped him before he could make a get away.

"Goodspeed, you do know that if I wanted to I could, well maybe not hang you out to dry, but I would be completely in my rights to bounce you off this investigation. Care to guess why I'm not?"

"Since I doubt it's for my scintillating conversation, I would have to say it's because I bear a startling likeness to our main suspect."

"Got it in one Dr. Goodspeed and given that likeness we may be able to use you to set up Blazes contacts, should he prove to be unhappy with doing it for us. The question Dr. Goodspeed is, what to do with you until then?"

"If you have a lab and something to analyse I'll be happy to stay out of the way, besides lab work is really what I do."

Thornton obviously thought that sounded like an excellent idea, but had to dismiss it as he already had other plans for the scientist.

"As much as I'd like to send you to a lab, I'd feel sorry for all the other geeks if they had to be exposed to you. So you, Dr. Goodspeed, will be assisting the Fort Worth police in their search for this." Thornton passed him a picture of the Hellcycle, obviously taken from a screen capture when Ghost Rider had gotten off his bike, just after driving down the side of a building.

"Of course sir. What about Dr. Hunter?" Stanley asked, hoping his partner wasn't about to be tarred by the same brush.

"Well he didn't screw up, did he? He'll be over at Blaze's place with Ruiz and Manning, taking the samples we should have gotten last night."

Stanley winced at that, knowing he was right."

"Get a vehicle from the motor pool, Dr. Hunter will need your current issue. Then get over to police headquarters, you're expected within the hour."

"Yes sir."

--------000--------

"Cars? We don't have any extra cars agent; if you want something to drive go see Hertz or something."

"Look, I was told by my supervisor to pick up a vehicle. If you don't have one that's fine, I'm happy to grab a taxi, however I rather doubt that Agent Thornton is the type to make that kind of a mistake."

The man shifted slightly at Thornton's name before the light of understanding dawned on his face. "Dr. Goodspeed?"

Stanley nodded.

"Okay then, I've got your ride right over here. He dragged the biochemist down a few parking spaces until they were in front of a motorcycle.

Stanley stared at the black and grey Harley Davidson Night Train, wondering if Thornton was trying to set him up as Blaze, or just trying to set him up.

"There a helmet for this thing?"

"Nope, sorry man."

"Fine," he said with a sigh, "get the keys please, I'll take it."

The guy gave him a little salute and wandered off, returning with the keys and several pages of release forms for Stanley to sign. As Stanley finished with them and took the keys he wondered if Thornton knew just how much not like Johnny Blaze he was going to seem. Personally he thought he was going to look pretty silly driving around on this impressive piece of machinery in a suit, regulation shoes and sunglasses.

--------000--------

Dr. Hunter was on his hands and knees in front of Blaze's place trying to find any sign of the residue a motorcycle that had flames for wheels ought to leave behind. Given the description Stanley had given him he might not be able to see them with the naked eye, but he bet if he used the sniffer they'd be able to track the thing.

Waldo looked around and then checked his watch, wondering when Ruiz and Manning would get back with the warrant. This place wasn't in the best part of town and he didn't feel all that comfortable just standing around, it seemed like it was just asking for trouble.

"Dr. Hunter."

Waldo turned, expecting to see one of the other agents and felt his mouth drop open at what he did see. It wasn't until this moment that he realized he hadn't completely believed some of Stanley's story.

"Dr. Hunter," the ninja said again, "our employer would like to make you an offer."

Waldo got as far as, "Uh," and then everything went dark.

--------000--------

Dolan raised his eyebrows at Stanley as he pulled into the parking lot at police headquarters.

"Don't start, it's not my fault that they ran out of extra cars," Stanley told him.

Dolan just snorted at Stanley's statement. "You know, if you're going to try to muddy the waters by pretending to be Blaze, then you'd better get yourself some other clothes. I'd suggest leather. By the way, are you carrying enough insurance to be riding without a helmet?"

"Yeah, I've got the safety courses too. Although I don't think it's the brightest thing to do, even with those. And I doubt Blaze rides with a helmet, at least not when he's not jumping helicopters. Besides, they didn't have one for it and I didn't have time to pick one up."

The other members of the search team had finished gathering in the lot during their conversation and were now standing around, waiting to head out. "Well Goodspeed, as much as discussing your transportation woes is an amusing past-time, I think we need to get this search started. We'll be going over any property that belongs to Blaze's crew members, living or dead. That'll probably take most of the day."

"Oh, joy."

"Yeah, however we did find something we didn't last time. Blaze has a storage locker." Stanley raised an eyebrow at that statement. "Apparently after his dad died all of his father's stuff was stored in town by friends. Blaze has kept the payments up on it ever since."

"Now that could be a very interesting storage locker."

"I certainly think so."

--------000--------

Ruiz and Manning were at first annoyed with Dr. Hunter, but when they found the duffle bag of equipment he'd had with him lying by Blazes building they started to get worried. Armed with a fresh warrant they entered Johnny's loft but nothing much had changed other than the boarded up window. There was no sign of Dr. Hunter.

They called it in.

--------000--------

Johnny was pulling away from the fourth business he'd checked on, with no ninjas to show for it, when the sound of Karen Carpenter singing Superstar came from the inside of his jacket.

Johnny pulled over and answered his phone before Karen could really get going on the song. One of the problems of using music as a ring, you only ever got to hear the beginning of the song. Johnny figured that he should just reset the thing back to a nice normal annoying ringing phone sound and leave the Carpenters for more leisurely listening.

"Blaze here, oh Mr. Murdock, thanks for getting back to me, eh... No, no serious problems on this end, or at least not the legal kind. Actually the reason I called was that I was hoping that you would be able to look into a production company and upcoming movie they're producing. They're trying to hire me as a consultant. If you're not able to, is there anyone you could recommend, especially if it should go to the negotiation stage?"

"You'll look into it? Thanks." And Johnny reeled off what information he had, speaking faster as he noticed his phone start to hum and work its way up the note scale at an alarming rate. "Did you get all that...great, uh I'm afraid I have to go, contact me at my home number and I'll give you my new cell phone number then." The phone noise got louder. "What? Sorry Murdock I have to go, this phone is about to die." He pressed the end button and the phone literally burst into flames.

Johnny calmly dropped the thing, got off his bike and stomped on it until the fire was out. He looked down a little sadly at the lump of melted plastic and burned circuitry.

"Well, there goes another one."

Then he collected the bits and pieces of his former phone, walked over to the garbage can at the end of the block and dropped it in. He sighed, knowing that he'd have to stop off at an electronics store at some point and pick up another pay as you go phone, which pretty much required more ID than buying a gun did. He really ought to buy a full five of them at a time, but he was worried that they'd all blow up together, even if they were inactivated and still in their boxes.

Of course he suspected that it was carrying them around with him, even during the change that caused the things to eventually self combust. A new phone every three or four months was annoying, but doable, just as long as Ghost Rider didn't try answering it again. The one time he had the two week old phone hadn't lasted twenty seconds before it ended his conversation with someone who was offering him a free trip to Las Vegas. The poor thing went up like a roman candle.

On the plus side he hadn't had a telemarketer since then, no matter how often he changed his phone.


	16. Chapter 16

Disclaimer: Not mine, I couldn't even talk anyone into getting them for me, oh well. Full disclaimer back at Chapter 1.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter 16

_Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change. _

_-- __**Author Unknown**__  
_

Waldo Hunter groaned as he returned to consciousness. His head felt like it was attempting to float away, but was unable to do so as it was tethered to whatever it was that had crawled into his mouth and died. He was pretty sure that the nasty metallic taste meant something, but at the moment he couldn't quite remember what.

"Ah, Dr. Hunter, glad to see that you're finally able to join us."

Waldo blinked his eyes open and winced, the room was softly lit, but even that cut into his head like a blow torch.

He was, he noticed, sitting in a really nice, very plush leather chair. He was still wearing the suit he put on this morning, there were about thirty ninjas spaced out around the walls of the room and the person who had just spoken to him was wearing some sort of red and black ninja ensemble of his own.

What?

He closed his eyes and counted to ten, figuring that they must be playing tricks on him.

He opened them again.

Yep, leather chair, softly lit room, thirty ninjas and a scary super ninja dude, still all there.

"Dr. Hunter, if you are through rechecking reality I would like to talk business."

"Business?" Waldo rubbed at his forehead for a moment before he realized with a start that they hadn't tied him up or anything.

Oh, right, thirty ninjas.

"What business would that be?"

"The same business you currently undertake for the FBI, only with better pay."

"The same huh, somehow I don't think you want me to go around solving crimes, disarming chemical weapons and stopping people from killing each other with some of the worst crap the human race has ever invented."

"True, most of your duties would be the exact opposite of that; however you would still be a practicing biochemist."

"And if I say no?"

"I kill you and take the job offer to your partner, Dr. Goodspeed. Of course with him, I'd have the added leverage of his wife and daughter."

"You touch them and Stanley will gut you where you stand, and I'll help."

"Such bravado Dr. Hunter and were it not that I really do need a man of your expertise it would have already killed you. Since you and your partner are two of the best in your field, and I really don't want to take the time to find someone from out of country, I'll let it pass, but only this once."

Waldo took in a deep breath and admitted three things to himself. One, he was scared shitless. Two, there was no way he was working for this guy. Three, he was about to end up very, very dead.

--------000--------

Well, Stanley thought, he was right; Blaze's storage unit was interesting. Furniture that was almost old enough to be retro, posters from 'The Amazing Blazing Stunt Cycle Spectacular', tents and supplies that were obviously meant to keep a cycle show on the road, mechanic jumpsuits and show jumpsuits, helmets and even one old stunt bike that Stanley was surprised Blaze hadn't rescued, if just for sentiment.

Nowhere in here however was there even the hint of one tricked out, flaming, demonic motorcycle.

In fact he was pretty sure, given the dust and the state of the lock on the door, that no one had been in here for a good five years or more.

"Damn it!" Stanley watched as a pissed off and frustrated Captain Dolan gave a box of random bike parts a kick, and then stomped out of the place.

Stanley was impressed, if he'd done that he'd have probably broken his foot.

He joined the good Captain as he was giving instructions to replace the lock and slap a police evidence sticker on the place. They might not have found what they were looking for, but that didn't mean there wasn't something useful in there. Although Stanley had to wonder just how big a favour Dolan owed the Judge. A warrant that allowed him to block entrance to the owner couldn't have been easy, even with the 'terrorist' threat.

Stanley had just decided not to ask when his phone rang, playing the opening of the Beatles', 'It's a hard day's night.'

"Goodspeed here." He listened for a moment. "What do you mean 'Where's Waldo?' You guys promised two years ago to never use that joke aga..." Dolan looked over at Goodspeed, concerned when he saw the man's complexion shade down a step towards pale.

"Where did you see him last?" He listened. "Why weren't you with..." More listening, longer this time. "Okay, I'll be over there as soon as I can." He flipped his phone closed and shoved it into his pocket while trying to pull out his keys at the same time.

"Goodspeed?"

"Sorry Captain, have to go. Apparently my partner has disappeared while he was checking around Blaze's place."

"He was alone?"

"Yeah, the other two agents with him had dropped him off so he could do an initial look-see while they went to pick up the warrant. It was just supposed to take a few minutes, but they got held up in red tape. When they got back he was gone, but his equipment is still there."

Dolan started to walk with Goodspeed as he headed towards his bike. He waved Edwards over to them as he did. "Edwards, Goodspeed has an emergency." He turned his attention back to Stanley. "Are you heading over to Blaze's?"

"Yeah."

"Edwards, Goodspeed needs to get back to Blaze's place, pronto. Be his escort."

"Only if he buys me dinner and flowers."

"Edwards!"

"Sorry Captain, on it Captain." Edwards ran for his car, which already had its bubble light going around and around on top of it. Seeing Goodspeed start his bike he hit the siren and pulled away with the FBI agent running along behind him.

--------000--------

Well, Johnny thought, looks like the sixth times the charm.

He hadn't seen any ninjas, but the helicopter on the roof, the limo parked near the building, the electric fence that gave off a lethal feeling that no other electric fence had ever done, and in Texas you come across a lot of them in cattle country, given how many ranchers use them to control livestock. All of that would probably have been enough to tip him off, even without Ghost Rider pushing against sunlight in the back of his head.

'_Evil'_

Oh yeah, this was the place.

He hid Grace in a convenient clump of bushes and circled the place, keeping lots of space between himself and the fencing. There were any number of ways into the building, although they all looked like they needed key cards. Of course, that was only if you were being polite.

Ghost Rider was probably more likely to go through the windows or a wall anyway.

Johnny stumbled slightly as he felt the Rider push again, hard. Why was he trying so intensely? There wasn't anything they could do about this place until sundown.

And then Johnny did something...well, stupid.

The building, while not at skyscraper height was still tall enough to cast some fairly long shadows.

And Johnny stepped right into them.

He fell to his knees as he felt Ghost Rider rip right past any attempt to control him. Six months of the change had taught him speed and how not to scream during it. It had even inured him to some of the pain, but even then it was still one of the longest, most painful split seconds of time that Johnny ever physically experienced, especially when he wasn't expecting it.

Ghost Rider stood up. He cared nothing about the pain; all he cared about was the evil that seemed to pour off of the building, reaching out to contaminate even the shadows he stood in. In a blink he was over the fencing in a jump that cleared the thing by several feet. Moments after a key pad became a smoking square of melted plastic with just a pass of his hand and he kicked in the stairwell door next to it.

Of course it was Johnny who ended up standing there in the brightly lit stairwell that he found behind that door.

"Just perfect. He couldn't wait for sunset, had to storm the castle now," Johnny said, highly ticked off at the moment.

'_Evil.'_

"Yeah, yeah, I know." :_Where?_:

And Johnny felt his attention being pulled to the top floor of the building. Ah, well, what the heck, he was already here.


	17. Chapter 17

Disclaimer: Yes, they will be mine, just as soon as I take over the world, mwa haa haa...er, cough, right. Never mind. For full disclaimer please see Chapter 1.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter 17

_Maintenance is as much art as it is science. _

_-- __**Author Unknown**_

Dr. Hunter was slumped in the comfy leather chair, still trying to figure some way out of his predicament. His host and most of the ninjas, there were still a couple in the room with him, hiding in the shadows, had left him a short while ago to allow Waldo to mull over his offer.

Crap, he was so dead.

He'd considered all his options. He could say yes and pretend to work for the guy, but he suspected that Scary Ninja Dude was no dummy and would see right through that.

He could say yes and do the work, and then screw it up at an opportune moment. But again, the guy was no dummy and would probably be able to safeguard against that.

He could say yes and actually just do the work, except he'd rather cut his own throat before doing that.

He could say yes just long enough to find out what the work was and then see what he could do after that, but that all seemed to go back to the guy wasn't a dummy argument for the first two.

He could say yes and do the work and keep Stanley from being dragged into this, but he knew his partner would kill him himself if he helped to create something that would kill, and he'd let him.

He combined them, doing a say yes, find out what's happening, keep Stanley out of it and screw the whatever it was up when the time came.

Unfortunately that still came back to the fact that, despite his fashion sense, the guy was no dummy.

Waldo thunked his head against the arm of the chair.

Last option, he could say no. He would die, no doubt horribly and then they would go after Stanley and do the same thing to him and Carla and Kelsey.

He wondered how upset his host would be if he threw up on his carpet.

--------000--------

Johnny took the steps two at a time, keeping up a steady pace. He'd noticed that, at the door he'd entered, and on each floor he'd reached, that there was a security camera in place. Sadly for the system the first one had suffered the same fate as most of his cell phones and he'd noticed that subsequent cameras all appeared to be shut down.

Too bad he couldn't do the same for the lights.

He reached the top floor sooner than he'd been expecting. He had counted the floors from the outside of the building and there should have been one more. He glanced down the stairwell and did a quick recount. Since it still came out the same as the first time he suspected that there was another floor above this one. A floor that this staircase didn't go to.

With a little shrug Johnny carefully eased the stairwell door open, glad to find that they hadn't locked them down into an out only position. He looked out onto an empty corridor of offices, all with their doors shut. Walking as quietly as possible down the hallway he found a second, more public staircase with an elevator next to them about 2/3rds of the way down the corridor. Past the elevator and stairs, at the end of the hall, there were double doors that looked like they opened onto a very large room, possibly a conference room or some kind of auditorium. He turned to consider the stairs and elevator, wondering if he should give them a try and see if he could get up to the next floor.

'_Evil'_

"Yeah, I know."

'_Behind you.'_

Johnny whipped around but found the corridor still empty.

"What?" He started to say, and then realized that Ghost Rider hadn't meant that something had been creeping up behind him, but was on this floor and had been at his back.

'_Evil and Innocence.'_

Ah hell, now he was going to have to look. Evil by itself could wait until sundown when he'd have the advantage, but innocence in the presence of evil might not survive until then.

He quickly dismissed the smaller offices, whatever Ghost Rider had noticed felt like it was in the nice big room at the end of the hall. The nice big room that would let anyone in there notice him, should he attempt to sneak in. Trying to go in there could very well be suicide.

He looked back at the elevator and noticed that the little office next to it was actually a maintenance room. Johnny opened the door to it and stared at the collection of cleaning supplies and equipment stacked into the room, but nothing seemed useful. He'd really been hoping for a nice breaker panel that would have let him shut down the power to the floor, but no luck. He looked behind the door to make sure he hadn't missed anything and what he saw hanging on a hook on the back of the door gave him a very interesting idea. Very interesting indeed.

--------000--------

Waldo gulped when he heard the doors behind him open and he twisted around expecting to see his oddly clad kidnapper. Instead he saw a maintenance man in coveralls and a cap who was pushing in a cleaning cart and vacuum cleaner. The hat was too far over his face for Waldo to see it properly, but he noticed the guy gave him a quick look before gazing around the room.

Waldo gulped again, sure he was about to see this poor guy hung up by his entrails for wandering in here to do his job.

"What are you doing in here?" An unnerving voice in the shadows asked and Waldo shivered, wondering if all these guys took menacing minion lessons.

"I'm here to clean the room; it's on the maintenance sheet." The guy stepped partway into the shadows and held up a clipboard of papers towards the voice like it was the Holy Grail.

"Get out, do the cleaning later." The same voice said.

Yes, Waldo thought, please leave, I really don't want to see what they'll do to you if you don't.

"Hey, no problem, but someone will have to sign the worksheet to explain why it wasn't done today. Here." And the clipboard suddenly caught fire just before the cleaning guy whipped it Frisbee like towards the voice of the ninja he'd been talking with.

Waldo heard a wumph as it hit something, possibly the ninja and then the maintenance guy stepped into the shadows, disappearing from view.

No dummy himself Waldo threw himself out of his chair and flat to the floor. No way was he going to remain a sitting target during a ninja fight. In a matter of seconds he'd gotten himself turned towards the exit and was eyeing the no man's land between himself and the only doors he'd been able to see in the room.

With a whoosh something ignited behind him, spurring him into a crawl across the floor on his knees. He'd have gotten to his feet, but the sound of small blades slicing through the air over his head stopped him. The ninja that came flying diagonally across no man's land to land in a semi conscious state off to his left side further convinced him to stay down and get the heck out of there.

He'd made it about half way across the floor to the sounds of fists hitting flesh, the rattle and strike of a chain and the strange occasional crackle of fire coming from the darkness behind him. He ducked a couple more times for flying things that he didn't take the time to identify and was almost close enough to touch the doors when he heard the voice.

This voice made the ninjas earlier attempts at menace sound like little kids dressing up in Halloween costumes to yell boo at their younger siblings.

"**Guilty**."

Waldo flattened himself to the floor reflexively and clutched at his ears when screams, as if from some lost soul forever denied redemption filled the room.

"**Guilty**."

More screams, but a different voice making them and Waldo heard two bodies hit the floor behind him shortly after. He squeezed his eyes shut as heavy steps walked around him, obviously sticking to the room's shadows. Eyes closed he missed the vision of a flaming skull atop a leather clad body as it reached a burning bony hand into the light. A hand which shifted to flesh and blood for the moment it took it to grab and pull the last ninja into the dark. Once more the voice spoke and once more screams filled the room and Waldo realized that he'd miscounted his ninjas, there apparently being at least three in the room with him.

As the screams reached a crescendo Waldo had to wonder just how good the soundproofing in this room was, his mind using the distraction of that thought in an attempt to distance himself from what was happening.

Silence. Brief silence it turned out as the new quiet was punctured off and on by the sound of whimpering, some of which Waldo would later be embarrassed to realize was coming from him.

Then an oddly familiar and thankfully different voice from the one passing judgement said, "I'm sorry, I don't know your name, but we need to go now." Hands grabbed him from behind and he struggled a moment before realizing they were trying to help him stand.

"What, who?"

"Don't ask, 'cause we're not staying long enough for me to explain."

Then they were at the door with his savour carefully opening one of them to peer out into the corridor. The hallway's harsher light lit the leather clad form of his apparent rescuer and Waldo dizzily wondered when he'd had time to get rid of the maintenance uniform. With no hat to block the view he looked at the man's face and blinked in surprise.

"Stanley?"

The guy just looked at him and shook his head.

"Not now," he half whispered as he pushed Waldo out the door.


	18. Chapter 18

Disclaimer: They're still not mine. My clever plan to take over the world has not yet come to fruition. So once again, full disclaimer is at Chapter 1.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter 18

_I haven't lost my mind; I have a tape back-up somewhere. _

_-- __**Author Unknown**_

Johnny eased them down the corridor, worried that things were going to well. Right on cue one of the office doors further down the hallway opened. A man, wearing the same type of clothing that Johnny had recently disguised himself with, came out and started walking down the hall towards the outer stairwell, not even noticing them behind him.

Johnny had backed the two of them up one step when he heard the elevator behind them ding as it approached the floor they were on. Grabbing his man in black he pulled him along at high speed and ducked into the office the maintenance man had just left.

That at least was empty of people, which was good as it wasn't much of an office. Every inch of wall space was filled with some kind of computer towers and the place was cold, cold enough in fact to make Johnny look around to see if Mephistopheles wasn't hiding in a corner somewhere.

"It's a server room," the Fed, whose name he still didn't know said as he looked around beside him. He went over and poked at one of the machines. "These things a practically new," he said, wonder in his voice.

Johnny looked at him, slightly lost. "So, that's good, right?"

"Stanley," he started, sounding exasperated, his voice quickly fading off. "You're not Stanley are you?"

"Uh, no but let's not get into that right now," Johnny said, shivering slightly as he pulled his gloves out and put them on.

The Fed looked around the room, searching for something. "It's Blaze, right?" He said, his voice preoccupied by his search.

"Yeah," Johnny said, frowning at the Federal Agent. "What are you looking for?"

"A phone, you know, something to call for help from." The agent stopped his hunt and looked at Johnny. "Wait you have a cell phone don't you?"

"Uh, sorry no." The agent looked at him in disbelief. "I did have one but it (self combusted) bit the dust earlier today and I haven't gotten around to buying a new one yet."

The guy sighed and looked around a little more. "I'm Dr. Hunter by the way," he said, turning Johnny's attention away from watching the door. The guy, Hunter, shrugged a little. "You said back there that you didn't know what my name was."

Johnny smiled a little and nodded before looking around the room a bit himself. Something about the computers in here bothered him. He moved a little closer to one, staring at it, not really sure what he expected to find.

'_Evil_.'

He jerked away from the machinery at that thought, wondering briefly if Ghost Rider was a technophobe.

He shook his head as the Riders presence in the back of his head tried to explain something in more than one or two words. Something about not evil in form but evil in purpose?

"What's so special about these 'servers' anyway," he asked Dr. Hunter, who looked like he was finally giving up on searching for a way to call for help.

Hunter waved a hand towards the row of computer towers. "Well, look at this room, there's enough servers in here to make it look like one of those old mainframe systems. A building this size could probably do with just one or two of these babies and even that would be a lot of computer power for the place. With this many they either have to be doing some very strange work, which given that they kidnapped me to make me a 'work for us or die' job offer isn't a stretch, or the room is serving more than just this building." He shrugged. "Or both."

Johnny looked at the computers and nodded. "Not in form but in purpose."

"What?"

Johnny just waved off the question and turned his attention back to the door. "Well, no one's come bursting through the door to get us, so I think it's time we see if we can get out of here." Dr. Hunter came up beside him and nodded nervously in agreement.

Johnny cracked the door open, trying to hear anything, but not having much luck over the air-conditioning and the running computer fans in the room. He opened it a little wider and looked up and down the hallway, finding it empty. He gestured to Dr. Hunter and they stepped out. Johnny pointed down the hall to the outer stairwell and they both looked at each other before booking down the hall as quickly and as quietly as they could.

--------000--------

Waldo took the lead by carefully opening the door to the stairwell. The severely lit concrete stairs looked empty and no sound echoed from any of the other floors. The ding of the elevator at the other end of the hall had them through the door with no further waiting. The doors to each of the floors had small wired glass windows in them and he and Blaze both took a look through it as the Scary Super Ninja Dude and what looked like his personal assistant came out and headed towards the room Waldo had been held in.

"We gotta go, now," he whispered harshly, noticing that Blaze almost looked like he wanted to argue the point and go after the two men. Instead he nodded and they headed off down the stairs, striking a balance between speed and silence.

They were a couple of floors away from the bottom, when Waldo almost jumped out of his skin as a building wide alarm went off and both of them ran like hell the rest of the way down, no longer needing to be quiet.

Blaze apparently had given up on subtlety as he slammed the exit door open and they both spilled out into the shadow of the building. Waldo hunched over panting as he looked across the yard, the no man's land between them and the fences looking a lot more daunting than crossing the room had earlier.

"They're electrified by the way," Blaze said.

"What?"

"The fences."

"Great, just great," Waldo panted out. "So now what?"

Now what was apparently two ninjas bursting out the door behind them. Waldo turned towards them, really wishing for the gun he usually carried, even though he hated the thing. He started to lift his hands in surrender when a chain shot across his shoulder and wrapped itself around one of the ninjas. The man was yanked away and thrown a good twenty feet, not that Waldo saw that, as he was to busy looking behind him at the flaming skeleton in black leather.

Looked like he owed Stanley another apology for his doubts.

The spectre looked at Waldo with burning sockets for eyes and said something profound.

"**Duck**."

Waldo did and the demon things metal studded black leather covered fist slammed into the face of the ninja who had been attacking from behind. He went down in a spray of blood and like the guy he'd thrown earlier, he didn't get up.

"**Come on**."

And the, what did Stanley call it? Oh, yeah, the Ghost Rider grabbed him and started to drag him through the shadows towards the fence. "Uh, we can't go through there." He mentioned, once he'd worked up enough spit to talk, his throat having suddenly gone dry.

The Rider just looked at him then back at the fence before stopping. He brought his fingers up to his mouth and blew a whistle. Something that Waldo had to wonder about as the being had no lips to do it with.

The roar of a motorcycle cut short his musings and a sweet Harley chopper moving on its own power appeared on the other side of the fence. As it crossed into the building's shadow it changed, becoming a motorcycle well suited to the being beside him.

"**Come on**." It said once again and half dragged him to the fence. Ghost Rider let go of Waldo and the agent watched as with a gesture a section of fence melted for the apparition, exposed wires sparked slightly and then died out as the other nearby sections lost power.

The bike revved its engine and still under its own power drove through the melted fence. The Rider ran a loving hand across his bike's handlebars before climbing on.

"**Get on**."

"Oh, I don't know, I could probably walk..."

Ghost Rider just glared at him and Waldo swallowed hard and did as he was told, nervously putting his hands around the cyclist's waist at the instruction to, "**hold on**."

Ghost rider revved the engine and with an almost insanity inducing laugh peeled away from the building, leaving a trail of fire that quickly flickered out and faded as they disappeared from view.


	19. Chapter 19

Disclaimer: Um, maybe I could buy them on a monthly instalment plan? No, huh. Oh well, I guess they're still not mine. For full disclaimer please see Chapter 1.

Author's note: Sadly Stanley and Johnny's meeting came out very anti-climatic. It's hard to beat him and Ghost Rider meeting.

Author's note 2: Warning, I'm probably taking a few liberties with Deathwatch's powers.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter 19

_A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation. -- __**Howard Scott**_

Stanley pulled the Harley up to Blazes warehouse loft as the sun began to set. This was the third time today he'd been back here since Ruiz and Manning had called in Waldo's disappearance. Edwards had gotten him here as fast as he could, but he'd still been behind the bulk of the task force. Thornton had looked like he wanted to kick Stanley back to his assignment, but he apparently decided not act on that emotion as he allowed him to assist in the search.

He and the other agents had spent the rest of the day running down every possible lead, no matter how small. Detective Edwards had done what he could on his end and the police became officially involved once they'd recovered Waldo's smashed cell phone a half mile from where he'd last been seen.

Ruiz and Manning had tried to canvas the area, but Blazes neighbours weren't very neighbourly.

In desperation Stanley had tried canvassing the area himself and through sheer luck the first person he approached misidentified him as Blaze and started to talk before Stanley could identify himself. Blaze, it seemed was eccentric and insular enough to fit in here and where they wouldn't talk to the Feds, they would talk to one of their own.

It was unethical, possibly even illegal, but Stanley ran with it. If it got Waldo back in one piece he was more than willing to bend the rules. For the first time the mistaken identity was working for rather than against him and all he had to suffer were a few gibes about the suit and come up with an explanation for his new bike.

Even then the people down here weren't really open, but they were willing to look at a picture of his missing friend and try to remember if they'd seen him. Problem was no one really had seen anything.

It had taken several hours to come up with their best lead, which came from a little boy. He'd been playing hide and seek in the ally behind Blazes place, the hiding part of it probably saving his life. The boy said he'd seen a sleepy man being carried by two ninja turtle bad guys, who'd put him into the back of a black van.

Stanley thanked retro children's programming for the description of the perps. Sadly the child was too young to know his numbers or letters so a licence plate was out of the question and the description of a black van was more than vague.

Even now police were still pulling over every large black vehicle they could find, but Stanley didn't hold out much hope. It had been too long and the kidnappers could easily be in another state by this time. It was unlikely that they were still driving around town. Unless the kidnappers made contact there was little to nothing he could do, but he'd ended up back here again anyway.

Looking up at Blaze's loft Stanley started in surprise and he flipped the bikes kickstand down as he killed the engine.

Blaze's lights were on. Every window lit except for the noticeably blank space where plywood covered where glass ought to be. Stanley wouldn't have even noticed the lights if the setting sun hadn't dropped the building into deeper shadow.

Blaze hadn't been home all day and calls to his cell phone had come up as disconnected. A call to Carla during the day to tell her what was happening and to let her know that he wouldn't be able to make it to dinner that night had brought up the fact that she had seen Blaze earlier that afternoon, not that long before Waldo was grabbed. While it didn't make it impossible for the cyclist to be involved, it did make it less likely. Captain Dolan still put out an APB out on the man, happy to have some reason to annoy Blaze. He also ran APBs on Waldo, the van and yes, even the ninjas.

Stanley knew he ought to call in and let them know that Blaze appeared to be back. Instead he got off the bike and walked over to the warehouse's lift. He hit the buzzer on the intercom box and fidgeted for the few seconds it took for someone to answer.

The voice, even distorted by the poor quality speaker could only describe it as, exasperated.

"Yes?"

"Uh, hi, um I'm Dr. Stanley Goodspeed with the FBI and uh, I'm looking for Waldo." Stanley cringed, both at accidentally making a Waldo joke and because he sucked at introducing himself under stress. "I mean I'm looking for Dr. Waldo Hunter and..."

"Did you say Dr. Hunter?" The static filled voice asked.

"Uh, yes?" Stanley replied.

"Thank the powers that be, hold on and I'll send the lift down."

Stanley jumped as the elevator activated. As he listened to it descend he hoped that Blaze's happiness to see him meant that he knew something about Waldo.

The trip up seemed to take forever, and then suddenly Blaze was in front of him and at the lift's doors, beating Stanley by seconds as they both moved to open them once the elevator stopped.

In his worry for Waldo, he'd rather forgotten that he would be meeting his 'evil' twin for the first time.

He'd thought that it would have been hard to be more stunned than he had been when he'd meet Ghost Rider.

Then he pulled tight on his emotions and in a surprising moment of pure, almost Zen like calm, he managed to not gape as he was finally face to face with the man. There was no doubt about it, the resemblance was truly uncanny. He'd have said it was like looking into a mirror, but that would have been untrue. Mirrors always reversed what they showed and this was more like seeing a photo of himself blown up to life size. Except this photo was in 3-D, and wearing black leather in contrast to his suit.

Movement behind Blaze caught his attention and he saw something that was even more surprising than his double.

FBI Chemical Weapons Expert Dr. Waldo Hunter.

"Uh, hey Stanley." Waldo said with a little wave and a stunned Stanley looked back to his twin who just shrugged and gestured for him to come in.

So he did.

--------000--------

To say that Deathwatch was angry was understating the matter. It was, in fact, rather like saying a nuclear explosion would make a good fire cracker.

So far he'd viewed the memories of the three guard ninjas and their fight with the flaming monster, a monster that had somehow gotten into the building and bluffed its way into striking range. Severely put out by what he'd seen there, and not at all placated by their screams, he'd gutted two of the men before he'd calmed down enough to merely drain the life force out of the third.

The two ninjas who'd failed in their attack against the escaping demon and Dr. Hunter were still alive, though only because they were in the sickbay being treated. The report on how they had failed and their current medical condition had been sent in-system to his computer, no one being stupid enough to bring it to him in person.

That just left security and maintenance.

The three men who had implemented and ran his security system and the three men who were supposed to keep it running were all kneeling on the floor of his office in front of him, surrounded by the ninjas who had dragged them in here. The room was cool, but every one of the six men were sweating profusely.

"Now let me see if I understand this," Deathwatch said as he stalked back and forth in front of his desk. "The camera system in the outer stairwell has been having intermittent problems for the last four months, problems that should have had the system either overhauled or completely replaced."

"Instead maintenance has been jury rigging repairs to the system, even though the budget shows an outlay for new equipment."

Deathwatch's eyes narrowed behind his mask. Someone here was lining his pockets and while he was willing to let a little padding of the budget slide, he would not tolerate out and out theft, especially when it interfered with his business.

"So when the system went down today, instead of investigating immediately, the problem was ignored, because it was always happening. This allowed an unknown to wander in here, take on and take out five of my men as well as kidnap the scientist I had already kidnapped myself."

"He was also allowed to destroy a key pad, the outer stairwell door, the stairwell's camera system, such as it was, as well as part of an electrified fence.

"MOST OF IT WITHOUT EVEN BEING NOTICE."

The first man in the line lost his head, and no by that we don't mean he started to panic.

Deathwatch drew in a calming breath as he cleaned the blood from his sword.

"Exactly how does a man with a flaming skull for a head go anywhere without being noticed?" He asked the next man, as he executed a scarf cut, bisecting the man's body from shoulder to hip.

Deathwatch stepped back as the man's body slid apart in separate directions, performing chiburi to shed the new blood from the sword as he did.

The third man had already fainted and disgusted Deathwatch grabbed the man by the head, bringing him back to consciousness as he raped his mind while draining him of his life-force at the same time.

Two of the three men that were still alive threw up suddenly, the last of them obviously fighting against joining in.

Deathwatch stepped back out of the way and placed his sword on his desk as he walked around the gleaming square of wood to sit down in the chair behind it. As much as he enjoyed the men's terror, he was just plain tired of the whole sordid mess, so once he was comfortable he signalled his ninjas to finish the job.

As the men screamed and begged for mercy he leaned back in his chair and lamented the lack of popcorn.

--------000--------

Stanley didn't know whether to hug Waldo or kill him. "Waldo, where have you been?"

"Well, first I was kidnapped by ninjas, by the way I had kind of thought you'd lost it when you said you'd been attacked by ninjas, so sorry about that."

Stanley just waved it off, as Waldo hadn't made an issue of it earlier.

"I'm pretty sure they drugged me, because I don't remember anything until I found myself in a room with thirty ninjas and some weird super ninja guy." He looked over at Blaze. "He's that Deathwatch guy you were talking about, right?"

"Probably," Blaze said, nodding.

"Anyway the guy gives me this 'work for me or I'll kill you and then I'll go after your partner next' speech. Ah, which reminds me, you should probably get some security on Carla and Kelsey, just in case."

Stanley paled slightly and reached for his cell phone, but didn't open it. "Tell me the rest Waldo, quickly."

"Okay, so the guy leaves me to think about it and I figure I'm dead, when suddenly this guy," and he waved his hands towards Blaze, "comes in dressed up like a cleaning man and takes out the three ninjas that had been left in the room to guard me."

"So he grabs me, hauls my butt out of there, then ends up hiding us in a server room when we almost get book ended by the bad guys. As soon as it was safe we got out of there, made to the stairs and managed to make it most of the way down when an alarm goes off. We hi-tail it the rest of the way down and out the door when two more ninjas come after us." Waldo hesitated here. "And here's the other apology, because..." He looked at Blaze, who just gestured to him to continue. "Because suddenly that Ghost Rider guy you were talking about is behind me and sha-wing, pow, both the ninjas are down. Then a really scary motorcycle shows up on the other side of an electric fence that he," he waved his hand towards Johnny again, "melts just by waving at it. Then we're driving away and he's Johnny Blaze again and the motorcycle is completely normal and he won't tell me how he did it!"

Blaze just sighed and got up, heading towards a small bar that faced out from the kitchen.

"You had better call in and let them know that Dr. Hunter's alright. And get someone to watch your wife and daughter."

Stanley was already on it, fingers flying over the numbers on his phone.


	20. Chapter 20

Disclaimer: I may own them in an alternate universe... Doesn't count huh? Still not mine. Please see Chapter 1 for full disclaimer.

Author's note: Sorry, this and probably the next couple of chapters are going to be a bit talky.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter 20

_Remember folks, street lights timed for 35 mph are also timed for 70 mph. _

_-- __**Jim Samuels**_

Thornton scowled as he stared at a map festooned with pins. Only a few of them were there to represent Dr. Hunter's known movements for the day. A few were sightings that hadn't panned out, a few more were where the police had pulled over and searched any suspicious large black vehicles. The rest, and they were the majority, were all Blaze.

He fought back the desire to gnash his teeth as he'd already done enough of that earlier, when the two teams assigned to Blaze had lost him. Given the reports, he didn't think that Blaze had even done it on purpose. He just seemed to naturally drive in a way that would give any reasonable person fits. The man had easily manoeuvred in and out of traffic at a rate that had left the two sets of agents scrambling to find even a trace of him.

They had eventually managed to find out where he had been, even if they didn't get him back in their sights. Although it had been pure dumb luck that they had managed that. Even six months out of the lime light Blaze was still a well known figure, especially here in his home territory and people noticed him and his bike when he drove by.

Mr. Blaze, he noticed looking at the pins, had been a very busy boy.

According to witnesses he'd been all over the city, crisscrossing it a couple of times at least. He'd also spent a fair time in and around the industrial park areas further out.

This was a man searching. The question was for who, or what.

One of the command centres phones rang and Thornton reached behind him and snagged it as everyone else was tied up with calls of their own.

"Agent Thornton, go ahead."

Thornton stood up abruptly causing everyone in the room to fall silent.

"You found him? You're where?"

Everyone practically held their breaths as Thornton listened to the voice on the other end of the phone for close to a minute. Annoyance chased disbelief across his face before something else he heard fixed it into steely determination.

"Yes, alright, I'll put two men on that right now, where are they staying?" He took a moment to write down some information. "You might want to call her and let her know what's happening."

"Okay, we'll be there to get you in no time, just lock the place down until we do.

Thornton hung up the phone and looked around the room. "Dr. Hunter has been found, alive and well."

Whooshes of pent up breaths and a couple of high fives followed. Thornton shut them down before they could get anymore celebratory.

"Listen up people." Everyone quieted. "Dr Hunter, with the help of a third party was able to escape and elude his captors. He is currently at the third parties domicile where Dr. Goodspeed found them."

"Ruiz, Manning, I want you to head back to the hotel and guard Mrs. Goodspeed and her daughter. Bring them here in the morning and we'll set up a safe house until we can get them back to Washington." He handed them the sheet of information he'd written down earlier. "Apparently Dr. Hunter's kidnappers threatened Dr. Goodspeed and his family should Dr. Hunter fail to co-operate." The two agents nodded and headed out.

"Agent Fowler," Thornton said, turning to look at a very competent looking woman. "Apparently Dr. Hunter was grabbed for his ability as a scientist, rather than as a Federal Agent and given that Dr. Hunter is a chemical weapons specialist that concerns me greatly. I want a search done for the last week. Anything to do with biochemistry, biochemists, chemical weapons, anything you can think of that might fit the parameters of the search. I don't care how small or how weird it sounds; I want to know about it. If you don't find anything go back another week and than another week after that if you have to."

Thornton stopped to take a breath.

"Agent Nichols, contact the Fort Worth police and let them know what's happening. Everyone else suit up and let's move."

--------000--------

Stanley closed his phone and looked over at Blaze, who was still messing around at the little bar. The man was pouring himself a martini glass of... Jelly beans?

Blaze looked over at him and held up the jar. "Jellies?"

"Uh, sure."

Blaze nodded and got out another martini glass and filled it with the red and yellow candy.

"Hunter, would you like some?" Blaze asked the question a little louder than he'd ask Stanley, so as to catch the scientist's meandering attention.

Stanley held up a hand before Waldo could say anything. "Please, don't give him any sugar, do that and we'll be peeling him off of the ceiling fifteen minutes from now."

Waldo looked at Stanley with some disgust, but must have agreed with him as he didn't contradict what his working partner had said. "Actually I could use something to drink, uh, by that I mean liquid, not liqueur."

"Good thing, as I don't have any alcohol on hand, there's root beer and milk and orange juice in the fridge or I could make up a pot of coffee."

Stanley shuddered at thought of Waldo on coffee, but as it was a phenomenon he'd seen every morning for the past five years he could survive seeing it again. Besides, he needed something to distract Dr. Hunter with for a few minutes.

"Waldo, why don't you fix a pot, I'm sure someone will drink it if you do."

"You're trying to get rid of me, aren't you?"

Stanley just gave him a look and Waldo sighed and went off to make coffee.

Blaze grabbed the two martini glasses of candy and walked over to Stanley, giving him one before he collapsed on his couch in a comfortable sprawl.

Stanley sat down beside him. "How do you want to work this?"

Blaze blinked in surprise at the question and took a 'sip' of his candy while he thought about it.

"Is there a way to work it? Given that you're a Fed I thought the only way to work it would be the FBI way?"

"Would that way work?"

Blaze swallowed his candy. "Nope."

"That's what I thought," Stanley looked over at Dr. Hunter who was fussing with the coffee maker. "I can talk Waldo into not mentioning the Ghost Rider thing," he said, as he fished a jelly bean out of his glass and popped it into his mouth.

Blaze looked at him; suspicion an almost physical force that rolled off of his body. "And what would you want in exchange?"

"The truth, or at least, to quote a popular movie, the truth from a certain point of view."

"So this truth?"

"Would tell us who Blackheart and his father is, and what they had to do with the deaths we've been investigating."

"How'd you know about Blackheart?" Blaze asked, sitting up straighter and clearly startled.

"We're the FBI."

Blaze just looked at him blankly.

"We tapped your phones."

Blaze face-palmed and shook his head. "You'd think I'd have seen it enough times on television to know that they'd do that."

"Mr. Blaze," Stanley said, trying to bring the cyclists attention back to the problem at hand.

"Johnny."

"What?"

"Call me Johnny, even my dad wasn't Mr. Blaze."

Stanley nodded. "Stanley."

Johnny nodded back at him. "Anything else this truth should hold?"

"Basically everything that you talked to about with Ms. Simpson and what happened today with Dr. Hunter. However the truth can't include demons, or whatever they are. It would be best to just rearrange them into very strange people, a terrorist group and a religious cult perhaps?"

Blaze shifted uncomfortably, "I don't like making deals with people much," he looked Stanley in the eye, "had a previous bad experience doing so. So if I do this, I want to know why you don't seem to be having the same problem Dr. Hunter has believing what he's seen, 'cause he's still trying to figure out where I hid the holographic projector."

"Okay, we don't have much time and I still need to talk to Dr. Hunter, so I'll just tell you that I have... access to some very strange, very classified information. Information that could get me arrested or dead if anyone knew that I had it. The fact that you know that and could use it against me is part of the deal."

"You know a secret about me, I know one about you."

"Exactly. Some of this information has, until I met you, come under the heading of 'Yeah, right and what were they smoking?' Now I don't know what's really going on, but a lot of people are already dead and anyone who needs a biochemist badly enough to kidnap one who works for the FBI is just too scary to leave walking around. So please, help us stop this guy and I promise I'll give you the rest of the details once this is over."

"Alright," Johnny nodded, "I'll do what I can."

"Waldo." Stanley called the scientist who was currently fixated on the drip of the coffee as it came through the filter.

"Yeah?"

Stanley gave a jerk of his head towards the two of them, "Come over here, we need to talk."


	21. Chapter 21

Disclaimer: Not mine. For full disclaimer please see Chapter 1.

Author's note: Sorry about this, this is really talky. I think it comes from some desire to actually see the good guy explain as much of the truth as possible, without actually admitting that anything supernatural is happening. 

"Honest officers, they were all killed by a giant flying vampire pizza. That red stuff isn't blood, its tomato sauce."

"Uh, huh, well some kind of sauce is involved, no doubt."

Why don't the good guys ever seem to realize that you can't save the world if you're in the mental ward?

Although Johnny's original "I didn't kill anyone," and not saying much else is a good way to do it, but only if you have time to wait for your lawyer.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter 21

_Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition._

_-- __**Monty Python**_

Agent Thornton was the first one out of the lift when it stopped. Whatever he was going to say when he got there was put on pause as he took in the sight of Dr. Goodspeed standing next to Johnny Blaze. He blinked and shook his head as if that could cure the sudden feeling of double vision. The effect reminded him way too much of the old split screen trick they used in movies and televisions when they had one person playing two parts. 

He snapped out his reverie, noticing as he did that many of the other agents had joined him in it. He cleared his throat to knock them out of it and focused his attention on Dr. Hunter instead.

"Dr. Hunter, I'm glad to see that you're alright. Do you need medical assistance, or are you able to head back to headquarters for a statement and debriefing?"

"Um, I can probably do the statement and debriefing thing, although I think a nervous breakdown may occur after it," the scientist stated in complete honesty.

Thornton nodded and turned towards Stanley. "Dr. Goodspeed, you'll need to be there as well, so please keep an eye on your partner." Then he turned to the person he expected to give him the most trouble. "Mr. Blaze, your presence will be required as well."

But Blaze surprised him by simply nodding and saying "Okay."

He wondered if that meant that Blaze simply didn't know what was waiting for him, or if the man and his lawyer had another trick up their sleeves.

The sound of the elevator starting up again caught all of their attentions and Thornton moved towards it, not noticing as Blaze moved into a guard position in front of Goodspeed and Hunter.

--------000--------

"Blaze!"

Johnny looked above him as if to ask the heavens what he'd done to deserve this as Captain Dolan exited the lift, followed by Detective Edwards.

Oh yeah, he'd sold his soul to the devil.

"Captain Dolan, Detective," Johnny replied politely, "I'd offer you a chair, but I think there might not be enough to go around," he said, indicating the FBI agents already milling around the place. 

Thornton came over then and Johnny discreetly backed away as the two men started a turf war in what amounted to Johnny's garage. 

He didn't listen in as he figured it would be the same old 'what are you doing here, this is my city, case, suspect, etc.' that he saw in almost every cop show on television that depicted what happened when local cops and federal agents clashed. 

Nice to know that the shows were fairly accurate.

Blaze backed up until he joined Dr. Goodspeed and Dr. Hunter, ignoring the continuing looks the other agents and even the two Fort Worth police representatives were giving him and Stanley.

--------000--------

Dolan's and Thornton's argument, while not ironed out, had at least been pressed into a shape that both of them could live with. During this time the pot of coffee, as well as a couple of the root beers from Johnny's fridge had been consumed by the waiting agents.

After that everyone loaded up to head to the FBI offices in town, something Johnny was grateful for as the police station at night was just a bad place for him to be. While he did have a little control over whether to change or not that control was, as he'd proved earlier today, far from good. The Rider might be willing to hold off for a time in the presence of one evil man. There was no way he'd hold back for even a moment if he ended up in lockup with the guilty again.

Dolan and Edwards came with them, their involvement apparently part of the two agency's agreement.

--------000--------

Once back at the field office Thornton put Blaze in a room with a couple of agents to keep him company. He had another couple of agents take Dr. Hunter and Dr. Goodspeed's statements. Everyone else was busy suiting up for a raid on Micromation Dynasystems, the place where Blaze said Dr. Hunter had been kept.

Thornton held off just long enough to get the quick facts version from Dr. Hunter. Searching would be far easier when they knew where to look for evidence, especially should the owners have attempted to clean up after themselves since his escape. 

Waldo omitted anything to do with fire, scary voices, scary bikers, and scary bikes, which shortened the information he had to convey considerably. This left him with the ninjas, something that had already been established. Deathwatch, a name for the bad guy that no one questioned him about as it was assumed that his captor had introduced himself and the few details he had of the 'work for me or else' offer. 

Blaze's involvement, from Waldo's perspective, was streamlined into him bluffing his way into the room that Waldo was being kept in and taking out the guards. That tale was also short, as he was unable to give many details, having to admit that he hadn't seen much of the fight. 

He did describe the server room they'd hid in, believing it to be one of the more important features of their flight from the building. Their subsequent journey down the stairs, almost being caught by more ninjas that Johnny had flattened with a couple cool moves and their escape via motorcycle, were mentioned almost as an after thought. Their circumspect trip back to town, done to avoid anyone following them from the building and Dr. Goodspeed finding them not long after they'd arrived back at Blaze's loft finished off his tale.

Stanley's statement about finding Dr. Hunter was even shorter and added nothing that would help them with the upcoming raid.

Thornton co-ordinated his people with the Fort Worth Police Department and SWAT and they stormed the place. Sadly all those extra people weren't really needed as they found little. The place had been cleared out quickly and efficiently. There were no people, no papers and no computers, even in the server room that Dr. Hunter had described hiding in. There was furniture in all the offices, but it was just furniture. Desks, filing cabinet, chairs, nothing that would help advance the investigation at all. A very frustrated Thornton had to refrain from kicking in a couple of walls, although he would dearly have loved to. 

He assigned some of his agents to the building, along with the police and crime scene analysis. They would remain to process the scene and hopefully they would find something they could use. Supremely annoyed he headed back to headquarters with the rest of his men. Maybe, just maybe, he'd be able to get something useful out of Blaze, assuming the man hadn't lawyered up in the last few hours, something he fully expected him to have done. 

--------000--------

Blaze's statement was something that everyone in the building that was attached to the case attended. Even though the night was quickly heading towards morning and everyone there had been on high alert since Dr. Hunter had gone missing, anyone who could be there was there. Therefore it was more like an inquisition than a statement, and coffee, lots and lots of coffee was the beverage of choice.

"Alright Mr. Blaze, lets start with the events of February of this year."

"You'll have to be more specific, a lot happened in that month."

Captain Dolan who was attending shifted angrily in his seat and Agent Thornton who was asking the questions didn't look much happier. 

"Let's start with the sulphur deaths and a man named Blackheart shall we?"

Blaze nodded.

"So, Blackheart, real name?"

"I don't know," more angry shifting, but there wasn't much Johnny could do about that. "Blackheart was the only name I ever had for him."

"His father?"

Now it was Johnny's turn to look angry.

"He never gave me a name, but someone I know said he went by Mephistopheles."

Johnny almost smiled when Stanley choked slightly on the water he'd just been taking a drink of when he said that.

Almost.

"The guy thinks he's scary I take it." Thornton said.

"He doesn't just think it."

Thornton let that pass. 

"The sulphur deaths."

Johnny sighed. "I never actually saw any of them happen, I just saw Blackheart at the scene of two of them."

"But you think he did them."

"Yes."

Spacing the words out Thornton asked his next question.

"Where, is, he, now?"

"I don't know."

Thornton slapped at the table angrily and would have started a rant if Johnny hadn't continued.

"After our last meeting he had, I guess you'd call it a nervous break down. His father collected him and personally, I don't expect him to see daylight for sometime to come."

"You wouldn't know where this Mephistopheles lives would you?"

In Hell. 

"No, sorry, I don't actually know him that well, wouldn't know him at all if I could have helped it."

Thornton paused in thought before broaching his next question.

"How did you meet him, Mephistopheles, I mean?"

Johnny took in a deep breath and seriously considered telling Thornton to bugger off with that question. Then he let the breath out and answered it.

"I was seventeen and I'd just found out that my dad was dieing of cancer. A stranger showed up, wanting to hire me. He said he ran a show and offered to"-cure him- "foot the bills to cure my dad."

"Did you take him up on the offer?"

Johnny stared off into the distance of memory before answering.

"Yeah, I did."

"So what happened?"

Johnny closed his eyes, wishing that it would let him not see the past once again, but it never worked.

"My dad died in an 'accident' during the show the next day."

"I take it you don't think it was an accident."

"No, and the stranger, he implied he'd been responsible when I saw him later."

"Why would he do that?" Thornton asked clearly confused.

"The contract specified that I would work for him if my dad didn't die of cancer." Johnny said, bending the truth as he would many truths that night into a different point of view. "And he didn't."

Everyone in the room looked stunned and a couple of quiet swear words were voiced.

"Could we go on to something else?" Johnny asked, his voice raw.

"Yeah, sure." Thornton said, his voice trying for unaffected but not quite managing it.

"How did you meet up with this Blackheart character?" This question was from Dolan. 

"Heh," Blaze laughed, but there was no mirth in it. "That's not exactly going onto something else." He took a deep breath and let it out. "The stranger, Mephistopheles showed up the evening of the day that I made my 300' foot jump. He wanted me to find Blackheart and promised to void the old contract between us if I did. I told him I wasn't going to do it and I took off."

"Where?" This was from Thornton.

"Everywhere, I just drove. Seeing him again really shook me up, I even missed my date with Roxy, uh, Ms. Roxanne Simpson. I'd asked her out earlier in the day, just after the jump in fact."

"You ended up at the Train Depot." Dolan again.

Johnny looked over at him. "Yeah, but I never saw the station master, so I really didn't know what had happened. Blackheart was there, I don't know if it was just dumb luck or what, but he and three others were there and before you ask I never got their names. They tried to run me down with a tractor trailer. Missed, but they totalled the vehicle and hi-tailed it out of there. I was understandably annoyed and went looking for them, but didn't find hide or hair of them. Eventually I ended up out at the cemetery, the one that's a few miles west of the city. Ended up in front of my daddy's grave just as the sun was coming up. The caretaker, uh, Carter, he found me there and let me crash at his place for a few hours."

Johnny stopped talking for a moment and reflected that all of that was fairly accurate, as long as he left out turning into a demonic spirit of vengeance.

"Okay," Dolan said nodding. "So why didn't you tell us ANY of this when we brought you in about it?"

Johnny sighed. "I really didn't know how to explain it, (another truth) except to say that I hadn't killed anyone. I just didn't know how to deal with anything that had to do with the man that I believed killed my father. I still don't, really."

"Okay," Thornton interceded before Dolan could take that conversation any further. "Let's move on and talk about something a little more recent. Let's discuss ninjas, Deathwatch, and just how you just happened to rescue Dr. Hunter from his clutches."


	22. Chapter 22

Disclaimer: Not mine. For full disclaimer please see Chapter 1.

Author's note: Warning, there will be some nastiness this chapter. 

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter 22

_After all is said and done, a lot more will have been said than done. _

_-- __**Author Unknown**_

Johnny leaned back and stared at the ceiling. "Well as always it seems to start with that stranger. He showed up shortly after I got back into town and told me that Blackheart had left 'something dangerous' with a, well I don't know if I'd call him a partner, knowing what I do about Blackheart I doubt he'd consider anyone as an equal, doesn't matter. Anyway this something was supposed to have been used as a distraction for his father while he moved to consolidate his power and make a take-over bid on the family business."

Great, he was making them sound like the mafia now. Although it did give new meaning to an offer you can't refuse. Johnny shook his head slightly, chasing the thought away.

"He said he didn't know why the guy never went ahead and used it at that time, but the stranger, Mephistopheles, whatever, figured the guy was going into business for himself and waiting for the right moment to use it." Johnny was suddenly struck by a thought and followed it for a moment while everyone around him began to get impatient. He looked around and noticed the annoyed looks. "Sorry, I was just wondering why Mephistopheles didn't move to take care of the problem himself, but then I really don't know why he does anything. Anyway, I told him to get lost, because, well one, it was him, and two, I didn't trust anything he said. However, he did tell me that several thousand people would die if the, whatever it was, got loose, so I had to at least look into it. He also told me that the guy I was looking for liked to go by the name of Deathwatch, but that his public name was Stephen Lords."

Johnny watched as Thornton scribbled out a note and handed it off to an agent that was obviously playing go-fer, who headed out of the room with it. "I did some library research on the guy, but all I was able to find out was that he was a well to do New York business man who went to a lot of charity parties. So I called my lawyer, who's in New York and asked him to find out what he could." Here Johnny hesitated again, not sure that talking about this wouldn't get Murdock's friend in trouble, but he doubted it would be a problem as he had passed the information along as hearsay, not as fact. 

"Mr. Blaze?"

"My lawyer wasn't able to find anything out through normal channels, but he does have a friend who's a reporter who passed on a few items that even he admits he was unable to substantiate and therefore unable to use."

"Such as?"

"That the man is an arms dealer who dealt in high end stuff, including chemical weapons.

Everyone in the room stirred at that pronouncement. 

"He also gave me a list of businesses he believes, but once again couldn't prove, that Lords owns. They're all controlled by shell companies and dummy corporations. I spent most of today," he paused as he looked at the clock on the wall, "or I guess that would be yesterday visiting the different companies in town. Micromation Dynasystems was the sixth business I checked out and as soon as I saw it I knew that something was going on there."

"How?"

"Helicopter on the roof, black limo and a black van near the doors, every door with a key card security system, and an electric gate that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up even from several feet away." He shrugged.

Thornton gestured for him to continue.

Johnny shrugged again. "I circled the place, and found the downed section of fencing. It looked like it may have gone down in a recent storm. I hid my bike in some bushes and went through it and over to the fire doors on that side of the building. The keypad was fried, like it had gotten an edge of whatever had taken out the fence. So I opened the door and headed up the stairs, counting the floors and looking through those little windows the doors had. Just lots and lots of offices. 

When I got to the top I realized that the outside didn't match the inside, as there should have been one more floor, so I went in the hallway and went down to the other set of stairs and the elevator. I figured that I would be able to get to the upper floor from there. 

When I got there I realized that this floor was a little different than the others as there was a really large room at the end of the corridor." He shrugged," I was curious, but... not wanting to get into trouble I 'borrowed' a set of coveralls and the cleaning wagon from the maintenance room before going into look." 

"Really, I was expecting it to be empty. Instead I saw Dr. Hunter, who I recognized as a Federal Agent as he'd been in the group that came to my loft earlier this week. He was sitting in a chair in the middle of the room and did not look comfortable being there. There were also three men in the room with him. They were all dressed like cartoon ninjas and were very impolite. I whipped a clip board towards one of them, and then gave him a solid punch. He went down and the other two jumped me. It was a tussle, but I managed to toss one of them off me and I followed up with another punch to the one that was left. Dr. Hunter had almost made it to the door by then and I grabbed him and we lit on out of there. I believe he's explained everything that happened after that."

"We're going to want a list of those other companies." Thornton said and Johnny nodded, expecting that.

Thornton looked around the room at his people, noticing just how much the group was running on adrenaline and caffeine. "Alright people, I think we've covered as much as we can tonight. I want everyone to get at least six hours of sleep, regardless of when their next shift is. Dr. Goodspeed, maybe you should see if you can get your family moving a little early this morning. I'd like to have them in a safe place before we continue any further, and Dr.'s you may both be targets, neither of you are to go anywhere without another agent, and I don't mean each other."

"Mr. Blaze, I'm going to set you up at the Hilton, with the rest of the task force. Agent Nichols here will be your shadow, don't lose him." 

"All right people, move out."

--------000--------

Night still had a couple of hours to it when Stephen Lords noticed that every light in his penthouse office, in one of his more publicly owned businesses, had gone out. With a smile he leaned back in his chair and templed this fingers. 

"Blackout."

--------000--------

Ruiz was bored. She hated babysitting and was grumbling slightly about it as she sat in the small living room of the Goodspeed's suite, flipping through a magazine to kill time. Carla Goodspeed was quietly packing, allowing her daughter to catch a little more sleep before she had to haul her out of bed. An act that would apparently take a pry bar and explosives to manage if what she'd heard from Dr. Goodspeed at coffee was any indication.

Agent Manning was wandering the small space, checking the door and windows repeatedly. 

"Manning," she said in a quiet voice, "do you think you could sit still for five minutes?"

Manning looked at her and shook his head before wandering over to check the windows again. Ruiz felt a shiver work its way up her spine. "Manning?"

Her partner just shrugged. "I don't know, I just feel jumpy."

A second shiver joined the first. Anytime Manning got jumpy was to be worried about, because something almost always happened right after it. He had even been jumpy while they'd been waiting for the warrant and Dr. Hunter was been being kidnapped. She had dismissed it, wrongly as it turned out, as simple impatience over the hoops they'd suddenly needed to jump through to get what should have already been a completed document.

She joined him at the window for a while and looked out, seeing nothing to be concerned about.

Except now she felt jumpy too.

Ruiz crossed over to the bedrooms and spoke to Mrs. Goodspeed. "Ma'am, get your daughter up, we need to leave, now."

"Is there something wrong?" Carla asked, her voice quiet, but her body language demanding an answer.

Ruiz hesitated a moment. "No, but I think we need to go as soon as possible."

Mrs. Goodspeed looked like she wanted to argue, actually she looked like she wanted to bite Ruiz's head off and given the stories she had heard at coffee about her tenacity that wasn't surprising. Ruiz just stared blandly back at her until Carla nodded and went to get Kelsey. Ruiz didn't realize just how many points she'd scored with the woman for not trying to pull any of that 'we're the FBI and you're the civilian and will do what we say' stuff with her at that moment. 

Unfortunately she'd never be able to spend those points.

All the lights in the place went out. Even the outside and hallway lighting must have gone down as well as no light came through the windows or from under the suite's door. Ruiz pulled her weapon even as she tried to tell herself it was just a power failure. She listened in the dark and could hear Manning fumbling his way over from the window. In the bedroom Mrs. Goodspeed could be heard talking quietly to her daughter.

Ruiz herself had started to move towards where she thought the door should be when she heard the muffled sounds of a struggle behind her, and then a wet tearing sound coupled with a strangled howl of pain. She turned towards it as best she could in the dark. 

"Manning?" She said in a low voice, hoping the man had just run into a piece of furniture.

"Hmmmm, now somehow I don't think you're Mrs. Goodspeed." The voice was sinister, amused and completely vile. It was also behind and to the left of her and she spun around, aiming her gun to where it ought to be.

"Uh, uh, uh, that's not nice." And hands grabbed the gun, smoothly pulling it out of her grasp. She threw a punch in the direction of the voice, aiming for what she hoped would be his face, because hitting body armour once was one time too many.

"Arrrggggg." Crap the body armour would have been better. She knew she had hit flesh, but it was how she'd always suspected that punching that old James Bond villain named Jaws, who had metal dentures instead of teeth, would have been. One of her assailant's hands grabbed her injured one and squeezed. 

Ruiz screamed as bones she hadn't realized were broken ground against each other. The pain drove her to her knees, but she herself was also a tenacious woman and she didn't let it stop her. She hammered her left fist towards where she hoped something a lot more sensitive than this guys jaw would be.

"Arrggggg." That was him this time and he let go of her suddenly, causing her to almost fall the rest of the way to the floor. 

"You bitch."

She heard a whiff of movement and tried to dodge, but his foot caught her in the stomach and she did fall this time. Collapsing, she fought the need to vomit as her stomach heaved at the abuse. 

A hand grabbed her by the hair and she clutched at it with her good hand. It hauled her to her feet and she was certain that she was now face to face with whoever this bastard was.

She could smell blood on his breath.

"That really did hurt bitch, but not as much as this will."

Metal stabbed into her throat at multiple points and she renewed her struggling as his lips touched her skin and she realized that he was biting her with teeth and jaws too strong and too wide to be normal. She choked as he bit down, blood flooding her throat as well as running down her body.

Then he pulled.

--------000--------

Blackout enjoyed the fountaining spray of blood as it pumped out of the dieing FBI agent. When it finally slowed he dropped her twitching body to the floor and signalled the three ninjas he'd brought with him, all of whom were wearing night vision goggles to cancel out the effects of his light dampening power on their mobility.

He sent two of them off to one bedroom, while he checked the other taking the third ninja with him for backup. 

He got lucky.

The sight of the lovely lady staring blindly into the dark and standing protectively in front of her daughter, while the little girl clutched at her mother from behind and tried so very, very hard not to whimper brought a smile to his face.

"Now you must be Mrs. Goodspeed."


	23. Chapter 23

Disclaimer: No darn it, the characters still aren't mine. For full disclaimer please see Chapter 1.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter 23

_I don't answer the phone. I get the feeling whenever I do that there will be someone on the other end. -- __**Fred Couples**_

Stanley caught a ride back to the hotel with Nichols since the other agent was heading there to tuck Blaze in for the night. This way he'd be able to help Carla pry Kelsey out of bed and would then ride back with them to headquarters with Ruiz and Manning.

Blaze was sitting next to him in the back seat and was looking rather annoyed. He had argued, without much luck, for going back to his own loft for whatever was left of the night. He'd even offered to have Nichols come with him, but Thornton wasn't willing to let him get that far out of his grasp, even with a bird dog on him.

Stanley cracked the window open beside him. Even though the night was cool the inside of the car had heated up since they'd gotten in. He wondered if it was just his imagination that most of that heat seemed to be coming from Blaze himself.

Blaze looked out into the dark his head turned as if he was listening to something. Stanley thought he could hear the faint sound of a motorcycle engine but wasn't able to see one behind them when he looked out the window. Someone had probably just started one up and hadn't turned his lights on yet. He notice Blaze give a little smirk, as if he knew something funny, before going back to flexing his fingers like his hands hurt. That was when Stanley realized that the man wasn't actually annoyed; in fact it was more like he was nervous. 

"Blaze?" He asked quietly, keeping his voice down to where Johnny could hear him but Nichols up front couldn't.

One of Blaze's hands clenched into a fist suddenly and just... caught fire, flaring up to leave nothing but bone and flame. Johnny looked at it in surprise for a moment and then gave it a little shake, like someone who'd just realized his hand had gone to sleep and was trying to wake it up.

Just as quickly as it had flared up it went out and was only a hand again.

Nichols looked into his review mirror at his passengers having noticed what smelled like a lot of matches being lit. "Hey, no smoking in the car."

A slight smile curved at one side of Blaze's face. "Sorry about that, don't worry, its out." He looked over at Stanley who was looking back with shock written across his face.

As Blaze cocked an eyebrow in his direction Stanley realized that he wasn't as blasé about the cyclist's Ghost Rider problem as he'd implied earlier. Some small part of him still didn't want to believe that any of it could be real, no matter what he had seen with his own eyes. As long as Blaze continued to look and act like a normal man he'd been able to distance himself from the need to believe in demons and such.

"Sorry, just surprised me, that's all." Stanley said quietly.

Johnny nodded and with a little smile went back to looking out the window and fidgeting.

Stanley pulled out his cell phone. Yes he was only minutes away, but he wanted to hear Carla's voice. He called the hotel, asking them to transfer him to their room and the phone rang, and rang, and rang. 

And then it was answered.

"Hello, Carla?"

"Ah, now who might this be?"

"Who is this?"

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that Blaze's entire attention snapped towards him, or rather towards his phone.

"Oh, now that's not polite, after all I asked first."

"This is Dr. Goodspeed," Stanley said carefully. He noticed that he also now had as much of Nichols' attention as the man could spare from driving.

"Ah, Dr. Goodspeed, you have a lovely wife and daughter. Such excellent taste in women."

"I don't know who the hell you are, but if you've touched them..."

"You'll do nothing, as you can do nothing and soon you'll arrive to... nothing. 

Stanley clutched his cell phone so tightly that even Nichols could hear the plastic creak.

"What have you done to them?"

"So far... nothing. If you want to keep it that way, well... We'll be in touch to talk about that."

And then whoever it was hung up.

Stanley was panting slightly in the early stages of panic and barely noticed that the heat in the car was now stifling. He looked into Nichols eyes in the rear-view mirror.

"Drive faster."

--------000--------

Nichols did so, using his car's radio to inform the field office of Goodspeed's strange call and of a possible kidnapping. Blaze had managed to pry Dr. Goodspeed's phone from out of his hand. Oddly treating it like an egg that might suddenly explode for no reason he'd carefully closed it and tucked it back into the inside pocket of the agent's jacket.

"Stanley, breath slower. If you fall apart now you won't be able to help them."

Goodspeed glared at him slightly, but nodded and started to slow his breathing. 

They pulled up to the front doors of the hotel and piled out of the car. Nichols knew he should get someone to keep Blaze secure, but that could take several minutes and he didn't have that kind of time. They hit the stairs, all of the elevators appearing to be at or near the top floors. When they reached the floor the Goodspeed's had been staying on both Nichols and Goodspeed pulled their weapons. Nichols waved Blaze back as he was both a civilian and unarmed and the man was intelligent enough to do so and let them do their jobs.

--------000--------

When they went through the fire doors and saw a number of agents in the hallway Stanley felt hope well up inside him. Then one of them turned to look at them, shock and horror in his face. Stanley felt his knees wobble and he slammed the palm of one of his hands against a wall to keep from sinking to the floor.

Nichols waved one of the agents over and asked him to stay with Blaze, who looked annoyed at having another babysitter, but let it pass for the moment. 

Then the two agents managed to push their way through the milling agents and make their way into the suite.

The first thing they smelled was the blood, and other than the agents spread out around the room it was the first thing they saw as well.

They notice Ruiz second, laying on the so very red rug that wasn't red at all, her throat ripped out like she'd been attacked by some wild animal. Manning was further back, closer to the windows and in very much the same condition although the damage appeared to be to his chest.

Stanley started to pant slightly again, as a feeling like a knife dug in and twisted at his heart.

"Where are they?"

Some of the agents around Ruiz's body looked up at him questioningly.

"Where are my wife and daughter?"

An agent, who's name he just couldn't remember right now and wouldn't have cared if he could, came out of one of the bedrooms right then and said "They're not here."

Stanley's knees gave out fully this time and Nichols grabbed him before he could hit the ground. He dragged him over to one of the chairs in the eating area as it was away from the bodies and sat him down.

--------000--------

When Thornton got there he took one look at Stanley and grabbed Nichols, telling him to get the scientist and Blaze out of there. He quickly wrote the number of the suite they had arranged for Blaze down on a business card and gave it to the agent while grabbing another agent to go down to the front desk and get the key card for it. Nichols tried to get Stanley's attention, but the man was still stunned and not reacting to anyone. He went out into the hall and asked for help from the agent he had babysitting Blaze. 

Johnny managed to tag along with them, but was stopped at the door while they went to collect Goodspeed. The two agents heaved Stanley to his feet and dragged him to the door and Johnny offered to help, taking over for his nameless babysitter. As he, Nichols and the rather unresponsive Stanley headed down the hall Johnny could hear Thornton clearing anyone who didn't need to be there out of the room and practically ordering them to go get some sleep. 

The agent who went down for the key card was just coming back up in the elevator when they got to lifts. He stayed on and rode up with them. Since Nichols had his hands full he went ahead once they got to their floor, opened up the suite and ran a quick search of it before they went in.

"We'll take him," Nichols said to Johnny and the motorcyclist relinquished his half of Stanley to the other agent and stepped back to lean against the wall near the door. The two agents moved Dr. Goodspeed into the bedroom and Johnny listened with half an ear as the agents tried to get Stanley to respond with more than indistinct sounds. He stopped listening in as they began to strip their fellow agent of his shoes, coat, wallet, phone and gun so they could put him to bed. 

Johnny closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall. He felt truly tired and he suspected that the sun had just come up as the nervous fission that had accompanied him all night, giving him the feeling that he ought to be out in the dark punishing the guilty and not sitting around doing nothing, faded to a fraction of its strength. A fraction that would, for the most part, be ignorable as long as he stayed in the light. 

He blinked his eyes open and smiled, slightly amused at himself. It had been a long time since he'd spent the whole night as Johnny Blaze and he was surprised to find that it was... odd to do so. He couldn't even remember if there had been one night since he'd become the Ghost Rider where he hadn't changed, even if it was just briefly. He didn't count what had happened with his hand earlier in the car to be a change, more like a moment of distraction.

Johnny rubbed at his eyes tiredly and was just contemplating finding a bed for a few hours when a very soft knock at the door caught his attention. He looked towards the bedroom, but the agents were still busy and hadn't noticed. Shrugging he moved to the door and looked through the peep hole to see a hotel porter waiting outside. He opened the door carefully.

"Yes?"

"Sorry to wake you sir, but this package came for you. They said it was very important and to please take it up now."

The porter handed him a padded manila envelope. Johnny looked at it, wondering why Thornton, or whoever it was that had sent this up, hadn't just brought it themselves. 

"Please make sure to open it right away Dr. Goodspeed."

"I'm not Dr. Goo.." Johnny looked up to find the hallway empty, he stepped out, looking up and down the corridor, but found no one.

"Well, crap." He stepped back into the suite and closed and locked the door. He turned the padded envelope over in his hands a couple of times and considered looking for a shady spot to change in before opening it in case it blew up in his face. 

Instead he ripped the envelope open and dumped the contents out into his hand.

It was a cell phone.

Frowning he looked into the envelope again and found another envelope, plain white and small with Dr. Goodspeed's name printed on it. He pulled it out and flipped it over a couple of times, trying to figure out what to do with them.

--------000--------

Stanley had known fear before. During the Alcatraz incident it had become such a constant that he'd eventually come to forget it was there. There had been so many fears, but the overriding one had been the fact that Carla and their unborn child was in the same city that a madman had several missiles pointed at. Missiles that were filled with VX gas, a nerve gas so horrifying it was something most scientist wished could be dis-invented.

But even with that fear he'd known that Carla was as safe as she could be made, having been brought to the command centre while he was off trying to disarm fifteen missiles with John Mason, a former SAS operative who was scary in his own right. But now...

A cry ripped through his throat, surprising the two men with him and he shook them off. He got off the bed and strode out of the room, only vaguely noticing Johnny as he stuffed a cell phone and something white into his jacket pocket.

He'd made it to the door when hands grabbed him and he turned, ready to punch out whoever it was.

It was disconcerting, surreal in fact to turn and realize you were about to punch someone who looked just like you.

He threw the punch.

Johnny blocked it. He might not be super strong when he was just human, but he had grown up in the carnies. He'd picked up more than just a little bit about how to fight. 

Especially how to fight dirty. 

As he blocked the hit he clipped Stanley in the side of the head with the elbow of his other arm, pulling the hit a bit as he didn't really want to hurt the man, just stop him. While the agent was reeling slightly from the hit Johnny shoved, catching him in the chest and sending him off balance into a wall.

The other two agents had reached them by that time, but Blaze held up a hand in a gesture to stay back. 

"Are you awake now Stanley?"

If looks could kill, well Johnny was just glad that they usually couldn't, but he was really glad that Dr. Goodspeed didn't have his own penance stare to throw around at the moment. 

"Yes." Stanley said, almost hissing the word out.

"Then do you mind if I ask you where you're planning to go in socked feet with no jacket and no gun?"

Stanley looked down at himself, not having realized his state of undress and suddenly wilted.

Johnny grabbed him as he started to slide down the wall and waved Nichols and the agent he still didn't know off. He started to drag the slightly struggling man into the bed room. "Just give us a few minutes." He told the two agents and closed the door before dumping Stanley on same bed he'd just vacated.

"I can't stay here," Stanley said, starting to rise. Johnny gave him a slight push so he fell back again before taking a seat on the bed across from Stanley's.

"I know." Johnny replied, and with a little sigh he pulled out the white envelope. "This came for you a few moments ago. The delivery guy was in a hotel uniform, but I don't really think he works for the place. He disappeared before I could do anything about it."

He handed it over and pulled the cell phone out and passed it over as well.

Stanley stared at the envelope for a few seconds, and then he looked up at Blaze.

"Sorry." 

Johnny just cocked an eyebrow at him.

"Sorry for trying to punch you," he explained.

"It's all right, figured it was yourself you were angry with, not me."

Stanley nodded and then taking a deep breath he ripped the envelope open.

There was a small white card inside with a phone number printed on it. Nothing else, just the number.

"I really should have turned this over to Thornton, there's probably evidence I'm messing up, finger prints, DNA, stuff like that." Stanley said, looking at the card.

"Uh huh."

Then he flipped the phone open and called the number.


	24. Chapter 24

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters. For full disclaimer please see Chapter 1.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter 24

_If you're going through hell, keep going. _

_-- __**Winston Churchill**_

Deathwatch, currently in the business suit of his more public identity as Stephen Lords, engaged the infrared lighting system as all the normal lights in the room were snuffed out. 

"Blackout, how did it go?"

"Delightful as always," the tall, extremely pale man said with a sharp smile that seemed to slice at reality to ooze sickness. "Care for a look?"

Deathwatch stood and walked around his desk, reaching out a hand to hold the other man's head in it. Psychic 'fingers' penetrated Blackout's mind and he watched Blackout's memories of the kills and followed it a little further to see him collect Mrs. Goodspeed and her daughter and transport them back here. 

He pulled back his 'fingers' and Blackout stepped away from him with his usual smirk on his face. Deathwatch took a brief a moment to once again wonder why the albino was one of the few people who didn't react in pain when he used his telepathy on him.

"Thank you Blackout for the two very delicious deaths." Blackout gave him a little bow and Deathwatch moved away from him, retaking his seat behind his desk.

"If you're interested in two more you can give me the Mom and her lovely little Daughter."

Deathwatch's eyes narrowed, "No, I have need of them, at least for now."

Blackout just shrugged. "Maybe later then."

Stephen Lords' personal assistant knocked quietly on the door and entered. He didn't react at all to the room being lit by infrared or to the killer who stood by his employer's desk. He approached and bowed to his master before giving his report.

"Dr. Goodspeed's package has been delivered to him and he should be calling shortly. Are you wanting to take any action against Dr. Hunter at this time, I can have someone in place to take him out in under two hours?"

Deathwatch leaned back in his chair and templed his fingers together while he thought. "No, not just yet. I think that Dr. Hunter would suffer far more from the effects of the disappearance of his partner and that partner's wife and daughter. We'll finish with Dr. Hunter once I think he's suffered enough."

His assistant merely nodded his understanding.

"Has there been any change in Dr. Huffman's condition?"

"No sir, he continues to display the outer appearance of catatonia, but our doctors say that his brain activity is still off the charts. He also seems to be in constant pain and even morphine doesn't appear to be effective against it."

Deathwatch mentally shook his head over his pet biochemist. The man had always been a problem, as he was rarely discrete about his appetites, but he'd had the truly inconsiderate bad luck to have some sort of nervous breakdown just when he'd needed the man's expertise the most.

Not for the first time he wondered what had happened at that movie theatre to set Dr. Huffman off.

His phone rang then and he dismissed the problem in favour of the solution to his problem.

"Ah, Dr. Goodspeed, so kind of you to get back to us so quickly."

"Where are they?"

"They're safe, that's all you need to know for now, we'll be in touch again Dr. Goodspeed, keep the phone handy."

"Wait."

Deathwatch hit the goodbye button on the phone, cutting off whatever Dr. Goodspeed might have said next.

--------000--------

Stanley came within a hair's breadth of smashing the phone he held into the nearest wall. He refrained, as destroying the cell wouldn't help him, in fact it would do just the opposite. 

"Stanley?"

Stanley took in a deep breath and let it out slowly shaking his head to forestall having to answer Johnny. He redialled the number but got nothing other than a disconnected service announcement and he closed the phone with a snap. "They're messing with my head, I don't know if there's a purpose to it or if they just get a kick out of."

Johnny gave a slight grunt. "Probably both. What are you going to do?"

Stanley closed his eyes, as if that would let him not see the memory that suddenly assailed him. "I don't know, but I do know that I can't let what happened to Ruiz and Manning happen to them." He looked up at Johnny, hoping he'd understand. "I can't."

"So you'll go and do what this guy asks, even if it's something that will kill thousands of people, even if you can't trust a word the guy says when it comes to the safety of your wife and child?"

Stanley stood up and shouted. "YES."

Nichols and nameless were at the door in seconds, but both Stanley and Johnny glared at them and they backed away, closing the door behind them while muttering something about 'getting it in stereo.'

"You know you can't trust these people to let Carla and Kelsey live once you've done whatever it is they need done."

"What else can I do, and no, don't suggest that I go to Thornton and we try to take these guys down that way, I won't risk their lives that way."

"Do I look like someone who would actually go through official channels?"

Stanley just cocked an eyebrow at what Johnny had just said and gave it a moment.

"Of course, I just happen to be the spittin' image of an FBI agent so I guess I do look like someone who'd go to them for help." Johnny sighed. "Look, I'm not saying to go to your people, I agree that staging a mass assault would probably get Carla and Kelsey dead, but you can't just walk in there and expect them to let them go. You need someone to back you up."

"You?"

Johnny shrugged. "I doubt Dr. Hunter would be a good choice. I like the man, but he's as much a target as you are and he's the only one I could see who'd blow off regulations to help." Johnny waited a moment before his next suggestion. "You know, the person who gave me that cell phone and envelope, didn't give it to me expecting me to pass it on to you."

Stanley took a second to sort that statement out. Understanding brought a look of horror to his face. "No."

Johnny just looked at him.

"No way, no way can I do that. I can't risk that they'd know that you weren't me and I can't send you off to get killed, so no."

"I doubt they'd actually be able to kill me, at least not at night."

"Night?"

Johnny blew out a breath, not exactly comfortable with letting someone know what was for him a serious weakness. "My 'powers,' for want of a better word, they only work at night or in deep shadow."

"So when it's daytime you're just a normal guy, unless you can find...?."

"A shadowy spot, or a darkened room works as well."

"But during the daytime all someone needs to do to beat you is turn on a light?"

Johnny nodded.

Stanley put his face in his hands and considered trying to hide in the darkness he found there. 

"Stanley, if you can get them to trade Carla and Kelsey for you, then we could both go. I could go as you and you could go masked... no, a motorcycle helmet, that should keep them from seeing your face if we get you one of my old stunt ones. They take me and you get the girls out of there. If it's daytime, then all I have to do is bluff being you until the sun sets and then I can take these guys down."

"Do you really think they'd just let me leave with them?"

Johnny hesitated, not answering for a moment because he suspected that Stanley was right.

"What else can we do?"

"I could get the FBI and the police to back us up. It would be a lot smarter than just the two of us trying to save them."

"If you think it will work don't hesitate to do it Stanley. The FBI has been dealing with kidnappings for decades now, I'm sure they'd know how to handle this."

"Ahhhh." Stanley clutched at his head and fisted his hands in his hair. "I don't know what to do. Damn it, even Alcatraz seemed easier than this in retrospect."

"Huh?"

Stanley just waved it off. "Never mind."

"You should get some sleep, anything you decided right now you probably wouldn't have even considered with a few hours sleep," Johnny said, noticing just how exhausted the other man was.

Stanley snorted. "Sleep, like that's going to happen."

"You should try. Like I said you're not thinking straight enough to make decisions right now and if you don't get some sleep you won't be of any use to your family when the time comes."

A sigh, "You're right, but..."

"No buts, try. I'm sure that phone will wake you up as soon as it goes off."

Stanley looked at the cell and then checked the ringer, finding it was cranked to the top of its volume. 

"Stanley, whatever happens, I'll help you get your family back."

Stanley just nodded and placed the cell phone on the night stand beside him before lying down. It was more to humour Johnny, as he really didn't expect to get any sleep.

Johnny got up and went to the door and quietly opened it. He spoke briefly to the two agents out in the living room, telling them that they were going to try and catch a few hours of sleep. They nodded and Johnny went back into the room and looked down at Dr. Goodspeed, who despite his intentions was fast asleep. The night had been too long and there had been too much shock to wade through. His body had enough sense to shut down the moment Stanley let it.

Johnny pulled back the drapes and took a look out of the bedroom window, smirking slightly as even at this height he could make out the shape and colour of a very distinctive Harley parked on the streets below. He just hoped she wouldn't get herself towed before night came. He looked over the window he was standing in front of and briefly contemplated the brick outer surface of the building before letting the curtain fall back into place. He walked over to the other bed in the room and laid himself down to take some of his own advice about sleep. While he was old friends with insomnia and a few nights with little to no sleep wouldn't hurt him much, even he could use a couple of hours right now. 

As it was nothing would happen to wake them until the relief agents knocked on the door at around 1:00 pm to see if they wanted any lunch.

--------000--------

Carla held on to her daughter who was asleep in her arms as they sat on a couch in a very expensive, yet very sterile room. The place made the hotel seem homey in comparison. She'd already searched the space over a couple of times, looking first for a way out and second for anything she could use as a weapon. In the end she had come up empty, unless she wanted to try taking someone out with the coffee table. Food had been delivered earlier, but she had ignored it, not willing to eat anything these people gave them, and for once Kelsey didn't complain about not getting to eat something as she apparently wasn't willing to trust the food either.

The door to the room opened suddenly and a man in a ridiculous ninja suit and well the mask wasn't really what she thought of as being ninja but she thought it was ridiculous as well.

"Ah, Mrs. Goodspeed, I trust you and your daughter are comfortable."

You've got to be kidding was the answer that ran through her mind, but she didn't voice it as she felt Kelsey stir and start to wake up. 

"No?" Her masked kidnapper asked.

"Why are we here? I mean, just what do you expect to get out of kidnapping us?"

"Your husband's co-operation of course."

"For what?"

"Well, you see, an associate of mine left me a very interesting sample of a very interesting poison. Used on one person at a time it appears to kill that person with acute sulphur poisoning. What it is actually doing is far more unusual than that, however current modern science would be unable to detect the full depths of this poisons effectiveness. 

When he gave it to me he intended for me to use it to kill a few paltry thousand people or so, but I realized that with the right alterations that it could be so much more effective. Therefore I had my people look into altering it to my needs. Unfortunately the best of these people, the one who would be able to make the changes I seek has recently been rendered unusable."

"You make it sound like his best before date came up."

"Perhaps it did. It would matter little except that I now need another biochemist to take his place. After a search through the available candidates I found that both Dr. Hunter and Dr. Goodspeed would be very capable replacements as well as being easily accessible. Unfortunately Dr. Hunter turned down my gracious job offer, but I believe that your husband will not choose to be as foolish."

"Don't bet on it."

"You had best hope I do, because I am certain that you understand that your continued good health rests on your husband's decision. Should he turn it down then another associate of mine would very much enjoy meeting with you again. I'm sure you remember him, he's the handsome, if pale man who so graciously escorted you here to begin with."

"He's not handsome." Both Carla and Deathwatch were startled as Kelsey joined the conversation with that sentence.

"He's the ugliest man who ever existed."

"And why would you say that? I wouldn't have thought you'd be able to see much of him, given that it's almost always dark around him."

"No, I couldn't see him, but that doesn't matter, he's still the ugliest man I've ever seen."

"Honey," Carla said quietly, trying to shush her daughter before she set off the megalomaniacal psycho in bad clothing.

Deathwatch squatted down so he would be at the same height as Kelsey was on the couch. "And how do I look?"

"Like something rotten that's so stuffed with death that it's starting to split at its seams."

"Kelsey," Carla exclaimed, horrified that the man in front of them would retaliate against her daughter for what had just been said.

"Interesting." He stood back up. "You have a very interesting daughter there Mrs. Goodspeed. If we should come to an adequate agreement with your husband I'll have to see what I can do with that." 

And then he walked out the door, leaving a terrified Carla clutching tightly to her daughter.

Author's note: Somewhere along the way I realized that, given that this is the Marvel Universe Kelsey is probably a mutant. Not a super powered one by any means, more in a minor telepathic way that lets her see people for who they really are. Don't worry about this becoming some major plot point; it's just something that kind of crept in to add flavour. 


	25. Chapter 25

Disclaimer: Ah, you already know, and if you don't go see Chapter 1 where the full disclaimer is.

Author's note: Only one chapter this time. Thing have been rather...well things have been. More will probably be up in a few days.

Author's note 2: I've done a little fixing to my puctuation, which has caused a little rewriting as well. Nothing major though.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter 25

_Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only. _

_**Samuel Butler, Erewhon**_

With the knock at the door Stanley came awake in full on, adrenaline rush terror. By the time his mind kicked in to remind him of where he was and what was happening, Johnny was already at the door talking with an agent, who was asking if they wanted any lunch. Stanley sat up and grabbed the phone, turning his body to shield it from the door while he fumbled with it to check the incoming calls.

Nothing.

A quick check showed that he had made two outgoing calls that morning, one after the other. Both calls had been to the same number and both of them went out just a little after 7:00 am, so the phone's systems appeared to be working alright.

The phone had voice mail, so a quick check of that showed that he had no new messages.

Somehow none of that reassured him enough to let him relax.

"Stanley."

He looked up at Blaze, who looked at him like he had been saying his name for sometime.

"They're going to bring us up some lunch. This suite has two bathrooms, so I'm going to go grab a quick shower, you might want to do the same."

Stanley just looked at him blankly.

"Stanley, go have a shower, it will help you wake up."

"I can't," he said, indicating the phone.

"Take it into the bathroom with you."

"Oh, okay."

Johnny just shook his head as Dr. Goodspeed wandered into the ensuite bathroom. He was pretty sure that when it came down to the wire the man would snap out of this, but right now he was swinging from manic to just plain stunned about every other minute.

He headed out to the other bathroom, stopping to ask the agent that was still in the suite with them if they'd be able to collect Stanley's things from his room. The man indicated two suitcases, saying that they'd been brought down earlier today.

Johnny just nodded and continued on his way to grab a quick shower.

Ten minutes later he was towelling off and giving his clothing a discrete sniff. Deciding that the t-shirt and leather pants were still liveable he put then back on, once he'd made use of some complimentary items (toothpaste, toothbrush, de-odorant etc.) that had probably been requested by the Feds when they arranged the room for him. On his way back to the room he grabbed the two suitcases and dropped them onto the bed that Dr. Goodspeed had used.

Stanley came out of the bathroom with wet hair and dressed in his previous clothes. He started in surprise when he noticed his suitcases on the bed.

"They had them sent up earlier."

He nodded and rummaged in them for a new set of clothing before headed back into the bathroom to change.

"If you need anything," he said to Johnny as he was shutting the door, "you know, like socks or underwear, whatever, just help yourself."

Johnny grabbed the aforementioned socks and underwear from out of one of the suitcases. He quickly stripped off the leather pants that he had been wearing commando style and put on a pair of briefs under them. He then put on the socks, grateful for them as he hadn't even bothered to put his back on earlier. In fact he'd chucked them into the waste paper basket, intending to do without even if his boots would have chaffed.

He was just doing the pants back up when Stanley came out of the bathroom, carrying the cell phone and dressed in fresh clothing.

"Thanks," Johnny said.

"Don't mention it."

"So what do we do now?"

Of course that was exactly when the phone decided to ring.

Stanley almost dropped the phone. Almost. He took a split second to centre himself and then flipped the thing open.

"Yes."

"Ah, Dr. Goodspeed, how pleasant to hear your voice and how nice to know that you've been waiting for my call."

"Could we just cut to the chase here?"

"You don't wish to observe the niceties of society?"

"Not really, and I rather doubt you do either."

"Hum, true, so very true. Then let us get to it. I have some work I need done, you can do it. The payment is the return of all you hold dear. Will you need a moment or two to think the offer over?"

Stanley closed his eyes and let go of the air he had left in his lungs. He reopened his eyes as he breathed in to answer. "No, I'll do it, but I want my payment in advance. I come to you and Carla and Kelsey leave with a," and here he looked at Johnny who nodded back at him, "with a friend who will see them to safety."

"And if I refuse?"

"Then I'll still come. Of course, if I know that Carla and Kelsey are safe and away from you, then I'm sure my work will be all the better for my lack of distraction."

"Hmmm, I'm not sure I like those terms, nor am I sure that you will live up to your side of this bargain Dr. Goodspeed, but I am a generous employer so I will take you at your word. I'll phone back later with the details of your advance payment."

And Stanley was once again holding a phone with no one on the other end.

He quickly checked the incoming calls and his recent one was there but the number had been blocked.

Stanley really, really considered swearing, but refrained. A knock at the door and an announcement that lunch had arrived had him switching the phone's ringer to vibrate before slipping it into a pocket. He followed Johnny out of the room to go eat at the small dining room table in the living area of the suite.

As he ate he wondered again if he was doing the right thing. If he went to Thornton, then they might be able to find a way to use phone they'd sent him. They probably would eventually be able to track the calls they'd already made and find out where this guy was hiding Carla and Kelsey. Not to mention that they did already have a suspect, even if they couldn't prove he was involved.

But, and here was the big but, could they do any of this in time to save the girls? Stanley didn't know and as he was definitely out of the loop at the moment he couldn't even tell what was being done about their only traceable suspect. For all he knew this Stephen Lords might be under surveillance right this moment.

--000--

Stephen Lords was under surveillance and it was a decent effort, even though the lead that connected him to Dr. Hunter's kidnapping and to the murder of two Special Agents during the kidnapping of the wife and child of another agent amounted to hearsay. If they'd had any real idea of what they were up against, well they didn't and in truth they wouldn't have been able to deal with it if they did.

As far as Stephen Lords was concerned the FBI were a nuisance, like the buzzing of insects around your head when you were trying to go to sleep. Not that they couldn't become a very real danger to him, but for now they were merely a sideshow to far more important events.

"Blackout, it appears that we will be, at least for the moment, exchanging the lovely mother and her daughter, for the scientist I badly need to finish a very important project and I was wondering if you would care to attend the event?"

"Doesn't really seem like my kind of thing, after all I'm a killer and it sounds like there wouldn't be any work for me at this exchange."

"Well... You never know now, do you?"

--000--

Stanley was still lost in his quandary when Waldo and his current minder showed up at their door.

"Hey man, how's it going?" He asked as he put a comforting hand on Stanley's shoulder. Stanley looked up at him, but just shook his head unable to answer.

Dr. Hunter threw an uncomfortable look towards Johnny, who was looking at Waldo like he was sizing him up for something. Worse, when he was finished, seeming to come to some sort of decision, Waldo wasn't even sure what it was.

"I'll let you two talk." The motorcyclist said, getting up from the table. He headed into the double bedroom, closing the door behind him.

"You know Stanley," Waldo said quietly, so as to not be heard by the three agents sitting on the couch, watching television, "I know that thing with the skull and the bike is just special effects, but that guy still gives me the creeps from time to time."

"Really?" Stanley asked, more by rote than because of any interest in the conversation.

"Yeah, it's like he knows about things going on behind the scenes that most people never get to see." Waldo shook his head, "guess I'm just jumping at shadows, what with everything that's happened."

Stanley shook his head. "No, no I don't think you are. In fact I think that sounds just about right." He looked at his friend who was now looking very worried. "Don't fret Waldo, whatever it is I don't think it has anything to do with us." Stanley said, before changing the subject to something that was much more important to him.

"Do they have any news?"

Waldo shook his head. "Nothing much," he said, before recounting the few facts he had about failed searches and ongoing surveillance, none of which gave Stanley any hope or helped him to come to any decisions.

--000--

Johnny was taking the opportunity of Waldo's visit to make use of the bedrooms extra phone and call his lawyer. He was a little surprised that the thing was still in the room, as he'd have thought the feds would have pulled it for security purposes. He suspected they just hadn't had the chance with the earlier blow up that had occurred and may have even forgotten it was in here. Either way it gave him the perfect chance to update his lawyer on the current situation.

Johnny couldn't prove it, but he suspected that the thumping noise he was hearing was Matt Murdock banging his head against the top of his desk.

"Mr. Murdock, I'll understand completely if you no longer want to continue as my lawyer, although I hope you will consider doing so."

Thump.

Johnny heard the lawyer sigh. "Don't worry Mr. Blaze, I fully intend to continue, however I am juggling more than one problem at the moment. I may be unable to get to Fort Worth quickly enough to help. I do, however, have a couple of contacts in that city and one of them should be able to attend the next interview. They'll report back to me and we'll see where we'll have to go from there."

"That would be fine Mr. Murdock. Uh, events here are sort of still on the move, so it's possible I may need this help sooner than expected."

Thump.

Johnny winced. "Sorry."

"No, it's alright Mr. Blaze, I understand more than most just how unpredictable life can really be."

--000--

After Waldo left, Stanley quickly moved back into the bedroom, not wanting the other agents over his shoulder should the phone go off. Johnny was in there of course, looking out the window as if searching for something. Apparently he found it after a moment, as an amused smile crossed his face for a second.

"Did Dr. Hunter leave?"

Stanley nodded and sat down on his bed.

"Are you going to bring your fellows in on this?"

Stanley shook his head. "No, there just isn't enough time, and I can't risk Carla and Kelsey that way." He hesitated. "You, you don't have to come with me, you know. If you can just distract our babysitters long enough, then I can get out of here and take care of this myself."

"I do that and no one will be seeing you, your wife, or your daughter again, you have to know that."

Stanley didn't even bother to argue.

The phone went off then, the vibration causing Stanley to jump slightly. He quickly pulled it out of his pocket and answered it.

"Goodspeed."

"Ah Dr. Goodspeed, prompt as usual." Stanley seethed, but said nothing.

"If you would like to receive the payment you have asked for, then you will need to follow these instructions to the letter."

Stanley grabbed a pad of note paper and a pencil that sat beside the phone and wrote down the instructions.

"You want to meet us there, at midnight?" He asked, not really sure he'd gotten that right.

"Yes Dr., now a few more instructions. Don't be late. Don't bring more than the one friend, who should only be there to help you get your payment to the bank. Don't bring the people you work with into this. Do any of those things and the payment will be lost during transfer. You do understand, don't you?"

"Completely."

"Very good, do you need any help getting away from your minders?"

"Hold on please." Stanley passed the note pad with the time and place over to Johnny, and then held his hand over the mouth piece of the phone. "Do we need any help getting out of here, or getting there?"

Johnny looked at the pad and frowned at what it said, but shook his head at Stanley's question.

Stanley spoke back into the phone. "No, we can manage."

"Very good, we will expect you at midnight." And then he was gone.

Stanley closed the phone and looked to Johnny, who was still staring at the note pad. "Well?"

"As soon as it's dark enough, we're gone." He looked up from the pad. "We will need to stop by my place. I want to grab my shotgun and we'll need to get you a car if you're going to be able to get your ladies away from there."

"So you know where that is?"

"Yeah," Johnny said, irony colouring his voice, "it's the same graveyard my dad's buried in."


	26. Chapter 26

Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue. For full disclaimer, please see Chapter 1.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter 26

_If you play with fire, you're gonna get burned._

_-- __**Saying**_

It seemed like the sun would never set. Stanley rested, he watched television, he flipped through a newspaper and he managed to veto an attempt to get him and Johnny separate rooms. Necessary, since Johnny was the one with the plan to get them out of here.

After Stanley told Blaze that it was entirely possible that the suites phones were being monitored, Johnny decided against a half formed plan to call his neighbour Bill and see if he could borrow one of his better running clunkers. If Johnny's place had always had around a dozen bikes in it until recently, then Bill had always seemed to have about a half dozen cars in his place and wouldn't miss one if it got wrecked during the night.

He had considered borrowing a cell phone to make the call, but wasn't willing to risk the possibility that his usual luck with the things wouldn't be worse than usual. He would just have to see if the man was in when they stopped by his place, and try and figure something else out if he wasn't.

He'd checked on Grace from time to time during the day, noticing that she moved occasionally when the coast was clear, keeping to the shadows and avoiding being ticketed or towed.

"We're probably going to be noticed leaving." He warned Stanley.

Stanley wasn't happy about that, but nodded in understanding. "Just as long as they can't find us once we're gone."

"They won't." But still, maybe he'd see if they could be a little discrete. After all, the downtown core around here ought to quiet down a little once the work day was over, even this close to Sundance Square. If they could just find the right moment...

And finally night fell.

--000--

Stanley and Johnny had told their latest minders that they were going to hit the sack early and closed themselves up in the bedroom, something the agents were glad for as the two of them had been fidgety all day. The two guards relaxed a little and while they didn't exactly kick back, they did sit down and turn on the television. While it wasn't intentional the volume of the sports program would end up being just loud enough to drown out what was happening in the other room.

Stanley was looking out the window, about to ask Johnny how they were going to do this, something he was somewhat surprised he hadn't thought to wonder about until now, when he heard and felt something ignite behind him. His mouth dry he turned to find a leather clad figure with the head of a burning skull behind him. His body suddenly and urgently suggested fight or flight, with flight desperately begging to be the overall winner. At the same time his mind tried to figure out why he was suddenly afraid of someone he knew and kind of liked, even if he did look different at the moment.

Well at least no one could accuse them of being twins now.

"**She's coming**."

Stanley cringed slightly; he'd forgotten what that voice could be like.

"Who's coming?"

The Rider pointed towards the window behind them. "**Grace**."

A motorcycle revved its engine just outside the window, which should have been impossible, because they were on the twelfth floor. The Rider strode to the window and threw back the curtains. With a gesture the glass in the frame warped and bubbled for a second, before simply slagging away to leave the frame empty.

Stanley poked his head out the window, his eyes widening as he took in the sight of a fire born motorcycle parked on the side of the brick building, twelve stories above the ground.

"**Come on**."

Impossibly strong arms grabbed him and heaved him out the window, slamming him into the seat of the motorcycle. Holding him in place with one arm Ghost Rider joined him, sitting behind him. He released the kick stand and opened the throttle, quickly sending them the short distance to the top of the building and onto the roof.

"Um, why are we on the roof."

Ghost Rider ignored him and got off his bike. He walked to the edge, carefully looking over the side to see if they had attracted anyone's attention with that stunt. Stanley joined him, wincing slightly as he noticed the line of black soot on the brick of the historic landmark.

"**No one's looking up**."

"Huh?"

"**We needed a moment, I think we got it**."

"Okay, so what now?"

The Rider walked over to the entrance to the stairs and pulled the fire door open. He took a few moments to carefully look over the stairwell before turning back to Stanley.

He had to wonder why he got the impression that the skull was smiling.

--000--

Stanley sat behind the Ghost Rider holding on for dear life and fighting a bout of nausea Gravol wouldn't cure.

The Rider bumped down another set of concrete stairs with the hellcycle and screeched around another bend in the staircase, before starting over again with the bumping. Stanley opened his eyes just long enough to check one of the doors they were passing, to see what floor they were on. He closed them again and groaned when he realized they were only half way down.

Bump, bump, bump, bump, screech.

Bump, bump, bump, bump, screech.

Bump, bump, bump, bump, screech.

And so on.

When they finally stopped at what Stanley hoped was the bottom he got off, almost falling in his haste. He clutched at a wall, using it for support while he heaved a bit and swallowed convulsively trying not to throw up.

"Spit Stanley," a now human Blaze said, "It'll help."

Stanley was rather surprised to find that he was right.

Once he had control of his stomach and the room wasn't spinning quite so much he joined Johnny at the door, and they carefully peered out to see if the coast was clear.

"Hey," Stanley started.

"Hmm, what?"

"That's Carla's rental over there," he pointed, "the blue one, near the end."

"Don't suppose you have the keys?"

Stanley quickly rummaged in his pockets, finding the ring of keys he'd reflexively put back in his pocket after changing this afternoon. "Yeah, she gave me the back up key that came with them just in case."

"Then it looks like we have a car." He took one more look around the underground lot. "Go!"

Stanley went.

He got to the car and opened it, glad to find that the key did work. He slid in and buckled up, it also being a reflex and started the car before flipping open the ashtray. Neither of them smoked so they tended to use the ashtrays in cars as catch alls. Jewellery, change and...

"Hah." Carla usually kept her parking lot pass cards in there as well, and this time was no different.

Johnny was sitting on Grace and waiting close by; he nodded at Stanley to go ahead. When Stanley pulled up to the barred exit he found out why. Just as he was about to put the ticket in so that the bar would rise he heard a thump at the back of the car. He cringed and attempted to duck as the next thump hit the roof and then stared in amazement as Johnny Blaze jumped his chopper off of the car and over the parking lot barrier.

Stanley stuck the ticket in and retrieved it before driving through himself. He glared at Johnny, wanting to give him a good snarl for that stunt and wondered how much damage the car had just taken.

Oh well, at least it was a rental.

Blaze smirked slightly at Goodspeed's expression before making a lets get moving gesture and both of them drove off towards Blaze's loft.

--000--

Although the sun had set a little after 8:00 pm that night Johnny had talked Stanley into waiting until darkness had a good hold on the night so it was a little after 9:30 pm when they got to Johnny's loft. From here the trip out to the cemetery could take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour, depending on the traffic. That gave them about an hour and a half to get ready, less if they intended to be out there early, which they did.

Stanley had parked the car as close as he could to Johnny's place, but Blaze had brought Grace up with him and left her in the middle of his garage space while he rummaged through the loft looking for things.

"Anything I can do?" Stanley asked Johnny's backside as the man looked through a metal trunk.

"Here." Johnny said as he turned and threw Stanley a shotgun, which he caught, eyes wide.

"Are you nuts, it could have gone off?"

"I never keep it loaded." Johnny told him as he found the backpack he used when travelling. He dug through it one handed, looking for the box of shells he'd bought for the gun shortly after he'd started his journey.

He'd gotten them just in case he ever needed an edge during the day, but he'd never made use of them, as the gun was much more effective when it shot out hellfire.

His hand finally found the box in the bottom of the bag and pulled them out. Noticing the deer in the headlights look Stanley was sporting, he passed the box over to him instead of tossing it to him.

"Load the gun and squirrel away a few more shells somewhere for backup." Johnny said as he looked around the place, trying to think of anything else he might need. He grabbed a couple of plain black motorcycle helmets, probably the only two he owned that didn't have his name splashed across the sides of them. He left one on Grace's seat to wear and affixed the other to the sissy bar at the back of the bike.

Probably didn't need the extra helmet but you never knew what might happen, so best be prepared.

Another look around had him staring at the plywood across the broken window and he went and found his cheque book, which was under a pile of mail he still hadn't dealt with since coming home. Since it was becoming more and more likely that he wouldn't be here when they came to fix the window, he quickly wrote out a cheque to the glass company and left it on the kitchen counter, held down by a jar of jelly beans.

As he was already in the kitchen he grabbed a glass from a cupboard and a pitcher of water out of the fridge. He drank down a couple of glasses of the liquid as he was a little thirsty from his earlier change, although it was nothing like the morning after an all-nighter.

Stanley had finished loading the gun and was holding it like it was a snake that was contemplating biting him. Johnny shook his head; you'd think an FBI agent would be more comfortable around firearms.

"You do know how to shoot, don't you?"

Stanley started and clutched the gun a little tighter. "I do, I even practice regularly, because I've learned you can never know what might happen, but that doesn't mean I actually like guns. If I could, I'd leave the thing locked up at home most of the time, but I learned years ago that that isn't really an option for an agent, no matter what field he works in.

Johnny nodded, understanding some of that.

Stanley looked around the apartment himself. "We should probably get going."

Johnny nodded. "Stop at the Texaco station across the street and gas up, even if the cars near full, I'll do the same. I'd rather know that the two of us can run a good long time, than have to start worrying about where to get gas should we have to do any long term driving to get your ladies to safety.

Stanley nodded. "Okay, let's head out."


	27. Chapter 27

Disclaimer: You know it; I don't own it, full disclaimer back at Chapter 1

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter 27

_"Anything I've ever done that ultimately was worthwhile... initially scared me to death."  
-- __**Betty Bender**_

It was a little before 11:00 pm when the made it to the cemetery. Stanley looked at the place, slightly horrified. He hadn't expected to be so huge. You could lose half the Fort Worth police department in the place. Worse, there was no way would he be able to figure out if anyone was already here, lying in wait for them.

He noticed Blaze stop his bike for a moment to look towards a gravestone and Stanley wondered if it was his father's. The man didn't linger though and he quickly continued along the twisting roads that ran through the cemetery, until he pulled up to a building that looked like it might have been designed for a caretaker to live in, sometime before the start of the last century.

As Stanley got out of the car he watched as Johnny attempted to peer through the papered up windows of the, well house was the wrong kind of word, cabin maybe? No, that wasn't right either. Hut? No that sounded too tropical and too small. Shack didn't fit either, as it was made of stone and was in much better repair than a building with that definition would have been to him. What it really reminded him of was a rectory, but he didn't think the former caretaker was a priest.

A sexton maybe?

Which, given that a sexton in Texas has the same authority as a law officer, in and around the cemetery they were assigned to, could cause a problem if the man interfered with the upcoming exchange.

Worried he joined Johnny at the door of the building, where he was poking at a padlock.

"Looks like the new caretaker doesn't live out here. Can't say I really blame them, Carter was an old cowboy and lived like one. I don't think he even owned a radio, much less a television." Johnny looked up at Stanley. "Makes it easier though, I was worried about what to do if someone was out here." Stanley nodded in agreement and Johnny poked the padlock again just as his hand ignited. Much like the window earlier tonight the metal lock seemed to sag for a moment, before it liquefied and ended up a molten puddle on the ground.

Johnny's hand snuffed out and he opened the door. A quick look showed that the place didn't have any electricity and Johnny lit a few of the candles that were sitting around, using the matches that sat nearby instead of trying anything fancy.

Stanley looked around the sparsely furnished place. "I supposed they cleared most of his things out." All they'd left was a simple bed, a desk, a plain wood table, a couple of wooden chairs and a calendar on the wall that was still on a page from six months ago. There were also a lot of candles and several religious items, such as crosses, a large bible and what looked like a register of burials. All things that had probably been stored here and matched in theme with the stained glass window of St Michael that seemed to dominate the room.

Johnny looked around himself. "Looks like they packed up most of his books, other than that it's pretty much the way I remember it when Carter was living here."

Okay, maybe rectory was the right term.

Johnny grabbed the chair from the table and dragged it over to the one near the desk and sat down. He gestured to the other chair. "Might as well sit, as it looks like we have a while to wait."

Stanley sat next to the desk and fiddled with the roll top for a bit, giving up on it when he found it to be locked.

"Stanley," Johnny said, capturing the agent's attention. "Since we've got the time and the privacy and you need something to keep your mind busy how about you give me the full story about why you actually believed what I did was real when even your partner, who had spent more time around Ghost Rider, still thought it was a trick?."

--000--

It was just a little before 11:00 pm, when the agents assigned to keep an eye on Goodspeed and Blaze took a look into the bedroom, to make sure everything was okay.

Ten minutes after that Dr. Hunter was escorted into the suite, which was by now full of agents. The room itself was a disaster, already having been pulled apart in the search for clues to the two men's disappearance. Waldo looked in stunned awe at the melted window. Several agents were clustered around as they took samples and tried to figure out what had happened to it.

"Hunter!"

Waldo looked over to see Thornton standing between the two beds. He was pretty sure he'd never seen the man this pissed off before.

"Where did they go Hunter?"

Waldo just sort of went "eep."

"Hunter!"

Waldo held his hands up to fend off the angry agent. "I don't know, he didn't tell me anything about taking off."

"Hunter if you're lying..."

"I'm not; I wouldn't, not in a situation like this."

Thornton said something pungent enough that Waldo blinked at as if affected by the fumes.

"Any ideas?"

Waldo shook his head. "No, I..." And then he noticed the note pad by the table. "Um, could I get some gloves?" One of the agents by the window gave a wave to his kit that was sitting on the bed. Waldo snagged a pair of latex gloves out of it and put them on with a quick thanks to the other agent.

He turned back to the note pad and picked it up, turning it in the light to see if he could catch an image on the paper, from anything that would have been written on the sheet above.

"We already though of that. It looks like someone tore off more than just the top sheet when they used it last though. I was going to send it down to the lab, just in case." Thornton said this as he watched Dr. Hunter search the blank white surface.

"I doubt we have time for the lab." Waldo looked around at the milling agents. "Does anyone have a fingerprint kit with them?"

The same guy who'd lent him the gloves, peeled himself off from the main group at the window and handed over the asked for kit.

"Dr. Hunter?" Thornton asked, curious as to why the man thought he'd be able to get an image up.

"You see," Waldo said, as he carefully dusted the page with the dark fingerprint powder. "Stanley is really hard on his pencils, enough so that he usually makes sure to write on solid surfaces, the man loves clipboards. The thing is, when he's stressed, it gets even worse. I've even seen him gouge the top of a desk out when it was really bad, so..." Here he blew at the powder. "So I doubt that just taking the first few pages would have gotten all of the ones with a transfer on it." He looked at the page, blinking in surprise as he read the message there. "Well, that can't be good."

Thornton read the message himself and had to agree. In one call and five minutes he knew exactly where he was going and he had everyone who was going with him suited up and starting their cars.

They had a meeting in a graveyard at midnight and if they hurried they just might make it.

--000--

"Okay, this all starts a little over ten years ago. I don't know if you remember anything about a group of terrorists holding some people hostage on Alcatraz."

"Yeah, yeah, I remember. They stuck a tour group into the cells and then threatened to set off some bombs if they didn't get a bunch of money."

"Yeah, that was the official report; it was actually a lot more complicated than that."

"Well, I don't think we have time for complicated, so just tell me what you can."

Stanley nodded. "Okay, I and another man were sent in with a SEAL team to find and disarm fifteen nerve gas missiles that the hostage takers had pointed at San Francisco."

Johnny's mouth dropped open in shock.

"Yeah. Anyway the SEAL team ended up dead and the guy I was with, well he was unusual."

"How so?"

"He was a former British spy, who'd been caught stealing sensitive material, which he'd managed to hide before being found. Since he'd never given up the material he'd been dropped into prison without a trial until he did, only he never did and this happened back in the '60s."

"Well, that sucks."

"Mmm. Anyway the reason he was with us, was that he'd once been imprisoned in Alcatraz and he'd once escaped from it."

"Huh, I thought that..."

"Yeah, but they weren't going to admit that a prisoner that didn't exist, had escaped from a place that you couldn't escape from. And anyway, they managed to catch him again." Stanley blew out a breath before continuing. "So, we took care of the missiles and the, well terrorists doesn't really describe them, but that's part of what's complicated."

Johnny just made a motion to continue without explaining that part of it.

"Mason, he was the spy, he was vaporized in an accidental, partial bombing of the island, by the Air Force."

"Accidental?"

"Yeah."

"Okay... Vaporized huh?"

"Yeah," Stanley replied, trying to make it sound convincing. He'd tell Johnny what he could, but he didn't intend to endanger John Mason, wherever he might be.

"Anyway, before he died he told me where he'd hidden the microfilm, the sensitive material that he'd stolen. I went and found it and if anyone knew I had it, I would be in a situation similar to Mason's."

"Okay, so like we talked about before, you know things about me and I know things about you." Johnny thought for a moment. "So this microfilm, it has information about," he blew out a breath, "about people like me?"

Stanley looked at him.

"Yeah, it does."

--000--

Shadows moved though the darkness; they hid behind trees, checked behind gravestones and investigated the tall grass for anyone that could be hidden there. They noticed the flicker of candle light in the caretakers building, but as its windows were papered none of the shadows could see in and only the murmur of voices to low to be understood could be heard. The shadows withdrew to report and receive further instructions.

"Late June and early July 1947, New Mexico," Stanley said.

"Okay," Johnny relied, not sure what that had to do with him.

"Roswell, New Mexico to be exact."

"I'm not an alien."

"Neither were they."

Stanley sighed a little. "What my 'files' say happened was a lot different. It seems that there are places where, well, where it's easier for things from someplace else to force their way through to here. Roswell is, or at least was, one of those places."

"The reason any of this is in my files is that there is apparently a government agency that deals with occult threats. They were formed during the Second World War, as a countermeasure to anything Hitler might have dug up during his search for occult artefacts, to use to increase his power."

"Anyway, in '47, even though the war was over, they were still active and there had been a number of signs warning of something bad to come. A seer that advised them from time to time pointed them in the direction of Roswell and they went down there to stomp on whatever the problem was; only they were the ones who mostly got stomped."

"So what was it, what came through?"

"The description's not the best, something with tentacles and three heads and a very bad disposition is about the closest I can come to it. Whatever it was it was bad. Two of the five agents ended up dead thirty seconds after they engaged it, both of them suffering from some kind of poisoning that flooded their bodies with brimstone, while basically mummifying them and turning them blue.

"Blackheart."

"Well, I don't think it was him, unless he was a lot more inhuman looking than you've let on. Still it was something with the same ability, and probably from the same place."

"Maybe."

"Now, here's the part about you. Seems a local shaman had figured out what was going on in the area and called in a favour that a power owed him. Just as a third agent was about to go down a man, who was described as a flaming skeleton, dressed as a cowboy and riding a horse that had coals for eyes, jumped into the fray and beat the, whatever the hell it was, back. The fight scattered pieces of that creature all over some rancher's field and the cowboy finally forced the thing back to wherever it came from. Once it was back inside the shaman sealed the hole up again."

"You don't happen to know who the guy on the horse was, do you?" Stanley asked carefully, a little afraid to find out that it had been Johnny, himself.

Johnny gave a small laugh. "Yeah, but finish your story and I'll explain after."

"Alright. The two agents that were still alive and conscious watched as the shaman thanked the Rider for his help. Then the flaming skeleton turned to them and told them to either stop interfering in things they didn't fully understand, or start understanding them better. Before they even had a chance to reply he rode off. One of the agents took off after him in a car and managed to follow him for about a mile before the Rider looked back at him, threw him a little salute and then he and the horse just took off. A couple of minutes later the agent couldn't even see him, much less follow, and we're talking about some very flat landscape."

"After that, well the agents had two dead and one very sick man and while they were busy dealing with that the debris from the fight kind of slipped their mind. When the mess was discovered they covered it up, using the old weather balloon explanation and it pretty much worked. The story held until the '70s when someone, who had misinterpreted what they had seen during the clean up, started talking about spaceships and voila, instant invasion from outer space."

Stanley gave Johnny a moment to digest what he'd just told him before asking the question that had been on his mind off and on since they'd met.

"So, who was that masked man?"

Johnny laughed slightly at that. "He actually was a Ranger and we're sitting in his house."

"What!?" Stanley stood up and looked around, as if expecting the man to suddenly step out of the woodwork and demand to know why they were there.

"Sit Stanley and I'll explain."

And as Stanley retook his seat Johnny started the tale of Carter Slade, a Texas Ranger who'd sold his soul to the devil to become the Ghost Rider before him.

Author's note: I used Roswell because during 'The Rock' they mention that one of the things on the microfilm is the truth about the Roswell landing. I don't actually think that my version is what happened; I merely twisted what I do know about it to fit this story. Also, Stanley's writing habits are something I made up for the scene, although I do think it fits the character very well.

Just to let you know, I do plan to wrap this story up in the next couple of chapters. Actually the first draft is written, it just needs a lot of editing. See you soon.


	28. Chapter 28

Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue. Thank you. For full disclaimer please see Chapter 1.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter 28

_Weather forecast for tonight: dark. _

_--__**George Carlin**_

It was a few minutes before midnight, when a convoy of black hummers with their lights off entered the graveyard. Johnny and Stanley stood outside the caretaker's building, watching them and waiting. The two of them were studies in opposites. One in leathers, a motorcycle helmet to hide his face and a shotgun in his hands, the other in a suit and armed with a handgun. The only light in the area was the nearly full moon, the stars and the fitful flicker of candlelight that spilled from the doorway of the cabin behind them.

Stanley grabbed onto his emotions and shoved them down hard as Carla and Kelsey were pulled out of the vehicles by the costumed ninjas. Throwing his gun down and rushing to their aid would only get them hurt or killed.

"Dr. Goodspeed and friend, seems you arrived a good deal ahead of us."

Stanley raised his eyebrows, so this was Deathwatch.

"Seemed like a good idea. We couldn't very well hang around in Fort Worth, not when the FBI would be looking for me, just as soon as they noticed I was missing.

"Hmm, true. So Doctor, how do you want to work this?"

"Carla and Kelsey get in the car," he nodded his head over at the blue rental, "the keys are in it. They drive away; my friend with the big gun follows them on his bike and everyone here, stays here. Ten minutes after they leave, I walk over to you and we go... wherever."

Deathwatch nodded. "Very well, I find this to be acceptable." He gestured to his people and Carla and Kelsey were released.

"Stanley?"

"Just get Kelsey into the car."

Carla was shaking her head no, even as she rushed her daughter to the vehicle.

Then the candlelight from the building behind them went out.

"Oh, surely we're not going to say goodbye to the two lovely ladies so soon."

Johnny and Stanley turned, both aiming the shotgun and handgun towards the voice.

"Yes Blackout we are, I have a greater need of Dr. Goodspeed's abilities than I do for playmates for you."

"Pity."

Stanley and Johnny looked back and forth from the voice that apparently wasn't willing to step into the moonlight to be seen, and Deathwatch.

"Please don't let my associate disturb you."

"Carla, get into the car and drive, my friend here will be right behind you to help."

"Stanley, you had better come out of this alive or so help me..."

"Don't worry, after all I would hate it if you had to make me sing soprano."

Carla froze up for a moment at those words, and it was her daughter pulling on her arm and telling her they had to go, now, that snapped her out of it.

The car was the one she'd rented, so driving it wasn't a problem. She started it up and then got Kelsey and herself buckled up before putting it into gear and driving away. In her rear-view mirror she saw the guy in the helmet holster the shotgun on the bike and then start it up, following along behind them.

They were just passing the gates of the cemetery, when she heard the sirens.

--000--

Everyone else heard the sirens as well.

"Ah, Dr. Goodspeed, and here I thought we had a deal."

"I didn't bring them in on this; they must have tracked us here."

He stepped back as Deathwatch pulled a gun with a silencer on it and levelled it at him.

"Be that as it may, it appears that I will have to look out of country for a solution to my problem after all. Don't worry about your wife and daughter, I'll have my friend track them down later, I'm sure they'll have lots of fun together."

Sick laughter came from the building behind them.

"Not going to happen."

"Oh, and why would you believe that?"

"Because I'm not Dr. Goodspeed."

Deathwatch fired the bullet at the same time the man who had appeared to be Dr. Goodspeed went up in flames. The bullet hit him, rocking him back slightly with the impact, but that was it.

A flaming skeleton, wearing Dr. Goodspeed's suit, looked down at the bullet hole that had gone through his shirt and looked up again. Even without facial expressions to go by, it was rather obvious that he was annoyed.

"**Your soul is stained with the blood of the innoc..**."

That was as far as he got, when whoever it was that belonged to the voice from earlier, jumped him from behind.

--000--

Carla hit the brakes as the FBI and Fort Worth police, who had been called in enroute, blocked the road a little ways from the cemetery. The guy on the bike stopped beside her and pulled off his helmet, dropping it to the ground so he could hold up his hands, as everyone with a gun pointed them at him.

And that was just about everyone.

"Johnny Blaze, get off the bike and put your hands behind your head." It was hard to tell over the megaphone distortion, but is sounded like Captain Dolan.

"Uh, okay," Stanley said as he got off and complied with the instruction, "but I'm not Johnny Blaze."

Captain Dolan and Agent Thornton did a brisk stomp over to him. "Blaze."

"Actually it's Goodspeed, sir."

"Goodspeed?" Thornton looked over the leather clad form. "So where's Blaze?"

"Back in the cemetery, sir. He took my place, so I could get the girls to safety. Also, we both thought that whatever it was that they wanted me to do, had better not get done."

"Crap," Thornton turned to the assembled law forces, "I want the four furthest back units to stay with these three. Goodspeed you can put your arms down for now. Everyone else, the kidnappers are still in the cemetery and they have a hostage. Move."

--000--

"That's a nice trick my flammable friend, I especially like how your fire seems to be immune to my light damping powers, makes me wonder what you're using." Blackout said, as he attempted to power Ghost Rider to the ground.

The Rider shrugged, throwing the annoyance off of him far enough that he crashed into the caretaker's wood pile, that was stacked up by the side of the building.

"Ow, that hurt, hey, boss man, a little help here."

"Sorry Blackout, I don't know what our friend here is, but I don't plan to stay to chat with him. The police and FBI are almost here and have us out manned and out gunned. There will be other, better times for this confrontation." With a signal, all of his men either piled into the hummers, or faded back into the shadows. Deathwatch was the last in.

"Are you coming Blackout?"

"Screw you, I came out here to kill something, and I'm not leaving without doing so."

"**No one is leaving, you are all guilty**." Ghost Rider said, tired of the villains' bickering. He started to walk towards Deathwatch, as he seemed the most likely to attempt to escape, when once again he was tackled from behind.

"Have fun Blackout." Deathwatch said, before mounting up and signalling the group to head out.

"**Get off**." Ghost Rider said, trying to shrug Blackout off again. This time the killer was ready for it though and he rolled with it, coming to his feet with a bounce.

"You know," he said, as Ghost Ride charged him, "you're quite a bit stronger than me, but one can always beat strength," he grabbed the arm that the Rider punched out towards him, "with a little leverage." And then Blackout threw Ghost Rider into the same wood pile he'd just pulled himself out of moments ago.

Ghost Rider growled as he heaved himself out of the wood, igniting some of it as he did.

"**Your soul is stained with the blood of the innocent**." He said, as he walked back to Blackout and grabbed the strangely unresisting killer.

"**Look into my eyes**."

Blackout did, for several moments. "So, does this mean we're going steady now?"

The Rider growled again. "**You have no soul to burn**."

"Well that's just rude, and I bite rude men." Putting words to action he did so, sending his mechanically augmented metal teeth through the suit jacket the Rider was currently wearing. The flaming skull was a nice trick, but he was fully expecting to find a human body under it.

Except Ghost Rider's body was nothing but bone and hellfire.

"ARRRRRRGGGGGGGGG."

Blackout may not have had a soul to feel the pain he had inflicted on others, but he was still able to feel a part of that pain. Hellfire made contact with his metal teeth and raced up the side of his face, burning and twisting his flesh as it did. He pulled away, continuing to shriek.

Ghost Rider, noticing that the sirens were getting closer shifted back into Johnny Blaze, who just stood over Blackout as he screamed.

"My face, what did you do to my face?"

"Just made you look a little more like what you really are."

Cars screeched to a halt behind them.

"Everybody, hands up, somebody, get an extinguisher on that fire."

Johnny complied with the first order and looked over to the caretaker's building and realized that it was a good thing it was made of stone. Otherwise it would have been in danger from the fire that he'd started by accident in the wood pile.

"Blaze!"

Oh great, Dolan and Thornton in stereo.

"Gentlemen?"

"You and Goodspeed are in so much trouble." That was Thornton.

Johnny shrugged, with his hands still up in the air. "So what's new?"

Thornton looked down at the still shrieking killer. "So who's this? And put your hands down, you look ridiculous."

Johnny did so, gratefully. "Deathwatch called him Blackout. Given the teeth," here he looked at his, or rather Stanley's now shredded jacket, "I'd say he was the guy who killed your two agents."

Several people growled at that, Thornton included. "What happened to him?"

Johnny nodded towards the fire that was just being put out. "He tackled me and I threw him, he landed in the woodpile and then he got burned." The truth, from a certain point of view and leaving out a few moves in-between.

Johnny looked around, noticing that every car that was close by didn't have any working headlights, even the revolving ones on top of the police cars weren't lit, while others further away were.

"He said that he had a light damping ability." Johnny mentioned, waving his hands towards the dead headlights.

Thornton looked around himself. "Crap, he's a mutant." He sighed, "Get him handcuffed, get him up and get him some medical help, while I try to figure out what to do with him."

Thornton grabbed one of his men. "Get Blaze out of here and collect Goodspeed and his family on the way out, I want all of them at the field office while we try to sort this out."

"Blaze, you give this guy any trouble and so help me..."

"Not to worry Agent Thornton, I'm all out of trouble." Johnny made a motion for the agent to lead and happily allowed him to escort him to a vehicle and drive him away.


	29. Chapter 29

Disclaimer: Not mine, just borrowing. For full disclaimer please see Chapter 1.

Author's note: Yup, it's the last chapter.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Chapter 29

_If you spend all your time worrying about dying, living isn't going to be much fun._

_-- __**From the television show Roseanne**_

Stanley, Carla and Kelsey were holding on to each other, long after they had been delivered safely to the field office in Fort Worth. Waldo had tackled them shortly after they arrived, adding his own body to the group hug and scolding Stanley for doing stupid things. He then apologised for figuring out where they'd disappeared too, since they'd gone to rescue Carla and Kelsey and then started scolding again for not telling him, and so on.

Johnny just watched it all, a slight smile on his face and no little worry on his mind. He just hoped that what had happened here wouldn't continue to be a danger to them in the future.

--000--

The next couple of days were busy. Lots of questions, lots of answers, or at least the ones that Murdock would allow him to give. With an agreement to overlook certain slightly illegal activities, trespassing on Micromation Dynasystems being the least of them, Johnny continued his conversation about Blackheart and Deathwatch, telling them what he could and skirting around the parts that wouldn't ever be believed. Thankfully since Blackout was currently hospitalized and refusing to talk, he had been able to keep Ghost Rider out of the equation altogether.

They'd offered to place him in the Witness Relocation Program, something that Stanley, his family and Dr. Hunter were looking at seriously for themselves. It was almost a given that they'd probably have to go into hiding until Deathwatch could be taken down. Something that could take a while, as there wasn't any real evidence to connect him to Stephen Lords.

He himself had turned them down on the relocation. If Deathwatch wanted him he was more than happy to take him on. Of course, this meant he'd need to keep away from Roxy for awhile, something she'd been very unhappy to hear about. Still, she had accepted the situation better than he'd thought she would.

And during all of this his window had even gotten fixed, the glass people doing a lovely job.

Johnny was just standing in his loft, admiring the new glass and packing to hit the road once more, when the bell to his lift went off. He shook his head, one of these days he'd actually remember to lock the thing regularly.

Thankfully it was just Stanley and Kelsey.

"No minders?" Johnny asked them, as they opened the lift doors.

"They're downstairs; I figured they'd cramp the conversation."

Johnny nodded.

"Hi Johnny, can I play with Grace?" Kelsey asked.

Johnny looked at Stanley, who just shrugged.

"Sure, just be careful okay?"

"Okay," and she bounced over and started a high speed, seemingly one sided discussion with the bike.

Johnny and Stanley moved over to the living area and sat down. "So what are you planning to do?" Johnny asked the agent.

"Well, we've decided to not hide, at least not yet. I don't think we'd be good at it and while I don't like the looking over our shoulders we're doing at the moment, I think the program would make it worse, not better."

Johnny nodded, understanding all too well. "You can't live in fear."

"Exactly. So, how about you?"

"Well, I've got a job offer to consult on a motorcycle movie in New York, so I'm going up there to check it out. Murdock, my lawyer, his partner is going to look after the negotiations if I decide to do it."

"What's the movie?"

"Stunt-Master."

Stanley's eyes widened at that announcement. "Really? I loved that series when I was a kid. I hope they don't wreck it."

"Well the stunts look good at any rate, or at least they will if we can pull them off."

"Hope it works out."

"Thanks."

The silence that followed would have been uncomfortable, but they heard Grace rev her engine suddenly and looked over to see Kelsey sitting on the motorcycle, pretending to drive while Grace provided the sound effects.

Stanley stuck out his hand and Johnny grabbed it and they shook.

"Stay safe, Johnny."

"You too, Stanley."

Johnny saw them off, giving Kelsey a hug and agreeing to read any letters she wrote Grace, to the motorcycle.

Johnny said good night to Grace and hit the sack, planning to finish what little packing he had to do in the morning.

--000--

Shadows, unlike the ones Deathwatch's ninjas cast, slithered through Johnny's loft, piling up beside a motorcycle named Grace. They finally coalesced into the figure of an old man, holding a skull themed, glass topped cane.

"Are you sure you want to use up the favour I owe you on that?" The figure asked the bike.

Grace revved her engine as quietly as she could, in what was an obvious yes.

"Very well," the being said with a sigh.

And then he was gone, dissolving into the dark like he'd never been there at all.

--000--

Stanley looked up from the personal report he was writing, one he intended to seal away with the files he'd made from that, oh so very dangerous piece of microfilm.

He thought he'd heard a couple of thumps, outside the house.

Grabbing his gun he checked the inside of the house first, making sure that Carla and Kelsey were safe. Then he checked the outside, getting the help of the two agents who were still assigned to them.

Nothing.

Stanley shook his head; it was going to be a while before they stopped starting at shadows.

He went back to his files, finishing off the one he was writing, to lock it away with the others. He'd come to the decision, once he'd gotten home, that if he was going to keep ending up knee deep in weirdness, then he might as well keep track of it. It would be a perfect addition to the weirdness he'd already collected. And he'd already made up his mind to never, ever, refer to them as his X-files. He laughed slightly at himself, before turning the lights off and heading upstairs to join his wife in bed.

--000--

The ten ninjas that Deathwatch had sent to take care of the Goodspeeds and Dr. Hunter came back to consciousness, levitating over the mouth of an active volcano.

"Ah, good to see that you're all awake." Said the old man with the glass topped cane, who was standing on the black encrusted molten lava like it was solid ground.

Which it wasn't, as the nine of them that he dropped in soon found out.

The old man walked closer to the tenth ninja, easily commanding his full attention.

"Tell your master that the Goodspeeds and," here he shuddered slightly, "even Dr. Hunter are under my protection. If anything unfortunate should happen to them, I will take great pleasure in divesting him of every single asset he has. After which I will stick him someplace where no one ever dies and watch him starve to death, understood?"

The ninja nodded, profusely.

"Good," and with a gesture the ninja was flung away to land in the nearby ocean. Once he'd made it back to land, he found the nearest tourist hotel and using the phone in an empty room, passed on the message as it was given to him.

--000--

Deathwatch hung up the phone and relayed orders to cease any and all actions against the Goodspeeds and Dr. Hunter. He templed his fingers and sat back, trying to figure out just why the old man was interfering in this, but after a while he decided it didn't matter. The agents and the family members were just a loose end. He'd liked to have cleaned it up, but leaving it hanging wouldn't really hurt anything, it wouldn't even be in the way.

Besides, he had more important things to deal with. After all, his new biochemist would be starting tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully in a few weeks he'd have the problems with that lovely poison all dealt with.

Additionally, all of the recent losses his ninjas had taken made him reconsider the humans in the troops. He'd decided to reassign them to security, as Hells knew he needed new men in that area, who wouldn't lose their heads.

He was also in need of a new assistant, as the last one had somehow neglected to find out that Mr. Goodspeed and Mr. Blaze could pass as twins.

And speaking of Mr. Blaze, he was another loose end to take care of.

And the old man hadn't said anything about him.

--000--

Johnny Blaze drove down the highway, Grace purring under him and the tall, tall buildings of the Big Apple just in sight in the distance.

He didn't know what the near future was going to hold, but knowing the way his life was, well...

It would never be boring.

The End.

Author's note: I do hope to do a sequel in the future, with a different crossover, but it probably won't be for awhile, so until then, thanks for reading.

Oh, and no, I don't know why Mephistopheles owed Grace a favour (although I could probably make up a few, but this way, so can you). I was just amused at the idea that he might.


End file.
